Justin Bieber's Believe bombs at box office while critics savage I, Frankenstein
RETIRED, arrested and bombing at the box office ... can Justin Bieber's year get any worse? But he's not the only one copping a savaging from the critics.
JUSTIN Bieber's biopic Believe has bombed at the Australian box office, barely managing to scrape into the Top 20 on its opening weekend.
The film was released last Friday, the day of his arrest for drink driving in Miami.
The concert movie-cum biopic took just $152,500 on 96 screens.
Its dismal screen average of $1592 was almost one tenth that of Martin Scorsese's R-rated The Wolf Of Wall Street ($15,807), which stormed into the No 1 spot.
The Australian action fantasy I, Frankenstein is shaping up as a monster flop - despite not opening locally for several weeks.
The $65 million project, which was shot in Melbourne, has only managed to scare up a three per cent "fresh" rating on the critical aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.
Variety was scathing in its review of director Stuart Beattie's follow-up to Tomorrow When the War Began, which sees Mary Shelley's gothic creation catapulted two centuries into the future, where he becomes embroiled in a battle between shapeshifting demons and gargoyles.
"Utterly witless, listless, sparkless and senseless, this supernatural actioner makes one long for the comparative sophistication of the conceptually identical Underworld franchise,'' was the verdict of senior reporter Andrew Barker.
Audiences were similarly underwhelmed.
The film, which stars Aaron Eckhart in the lead role, took a disappointing $US8.6 million at 2753 locations at the US box office over the weekend. (The four similarly-themed Underworld movies, by comparison, each debuted at $20 million-plus.)
I, Frankenstein opens in Australia on March 20.
It's a bad start to the year for the Australian film industry, which sank to an eight-year low at the box office in 2013, despite a significant boost from The Great Gatsby, which earned $27.4 million.
Between them, the 26 films and documentaries released theatrically last year grossed $38,543,000, according to respected trade magazine If.
That represented a 3.51 per cent share of the box office, the lowest since 2005's 2.8 per cent and below the 10 year average of 3.8 per cent.
Industry observers will be hoping for a better performance from Wolf Creek 2, which opens in Australia ahead of I, Frankenstein, on February 20.
Early reviews, on the back of the horror sequel's premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year, have certainly been more promising.
"Neither as striking nor as fundamentally scary as its predecessor, this pumped-up, robustly crafted pic is still quite a ride, and one that genre-inclined distribs [distributors] should have no qualms about hitching," said Variety's Guy Lodge.
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