Kristen Stewart is moving on from her Charlie’s Angel’s flop. (Photo: ScreenCap)
Kristen Stewart’s hopes of starring in a blockbuster franchise like Marvel’s “Avengers” have flopped along with her latest feature film “Charlie’s Angels.”
Although the film received a middling rotten 52 critical score and a 78 audience score on review tracking site rottentomatoes, the movie was a certified bomb.
The film barely recouped its $48 million production budget after collecting just $17.6 million domestically and $39.5 million worldwide from 46 markets. That put the gross at just over $57 million, according to box office mojo.
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In contrast, the “Charlie’s Angels” reboot in 2000, starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Bill Murray pulled in a respectable $264 million worldwide. The stars reprised their roles in 2003’s “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” and scored $259 million.
The latest film was clearly low budget, which may help explain its poor performance. The two previous films had production budgets of $93 million and $120 million respectively.
The consensus among critics is the latest film just doesn’t measure up as a 2019 retelling of the hit 1970s television show.
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“You’re left with a ‘Charlie’s Angels’ that doesn’t know what to make of itself and, for the first time, feels out-of-style,” writes Adam Graham of the Detroit News.
“Does the fact that this unwanted update of the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ franchise is less awful than expected make it worth seeing? Hardly,” adds Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers.
But Kristen Stewart, at least, got a decent shoutout from The Washington Post’s Mark Lieberman.
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Stewart’s unexpected casting here, in a frothy action comedy, injects the movie with a shot of much-needed unpredictability. Of all the Angels, she works the hardest, ensuring that the movie isn’t forgettable,” he gushes.
Elizabeth Banks starred in, wrote and directed the film, which was supposed to put a feminist twist to the jiggle movie.
Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska starred as the Angels.
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In an interview with The Playlist, Stewart seemed relieved that nobody saw the movie.
“I think if I had made a movie that wasn’t good and one that I wasn’t proud of and a lot of people saw it, I would be devastated,” she said. “Luckily, I’m not feeling gutted because I really am proud of the movie.
But then she deflected. she blamed poor marketing and today’s polarized political climate.
“I think that the kind of the climate that we’re living in right now is polarizing, and it’s weird, and it’s kind of hard to promote a movie like that,” she said.
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Banks went even further. She said sexism played a role hurting the film.
“They’ll go and see a comic book movie with Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because that’s a male genre,” Banks said in an interview.
“So even though those are movies about women, they put them in the context of feeding the larger comic book world, so it’s all about, yes, you’re watching a Wonder Woman movie but we’re setting up three other characters or we’re setting up Justice League.”
Perhaps, ironically, Slate reviewer Inkoo Kang put her finger on the film’s ponderous messaging about feminism.
“The film is stuffed with noble intentions… But Banks’ vision of women-empowerment heaven plays more like a checklist of topics from the feminist discourse of the past few years than a coherent movie, let alone a crowd-pleasing one,” she writes.
Stewart let it be known back in 2015 she wanted to get back into action-fantasy movies playing a superhero. But a part that seemed tailor-made for her in a new “X-Men” film went to Sophie Turner of “Game of Thrones.”
“I want to do big movies. You get to play with more stuff and there’s so much more at your disposal. You get to do it on a larger scale, you get to connect with more people,” she said at the time.
Stewart had a shot at a franchise when she starred in 2012’s “Snow White and the Huntsman.” But she was dropped from the sequel after her scandalous affair with Snow White director Rupert Sanders.
Neither Stewart, nor Sanders made the cut for the second film. Her part was written out and the film featured co-stars Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron.
The follow up film, “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” was a modest success. It grossed $165 million against a $115 million production budget, compared with a $397 million gross for the first movie.
Meanwhile, Stewart has gone back performing in smaller indie films. Her next up is an Amazon strudios film based on the life of French actress Jean Seberg.
Seberg’s career was destroyed by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in the late 1960s because of her support for the civil rights movement and romantic involvement with activist Hakim Jamal.
“Seberg” screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October and hits theaters Dec. 13.
Early reviews don’t look good. The film is currently trending with as rotten 42 rating on rotten tomatoes.
“Obvious points are made repeatedly; characters spout slogans rather than naturalistic dialogue; dramatic payoffs feel unearned,” writes Jon Anderson of The Wall Street Journal.
Stewart will make her directorial debut in “The Chronology of Water,” based on the memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, a Portland, Ore., writer.
Check out the trailers below.