Scandal-plagued actor Kevin Spacey’s latest film “Billionaire Boys Club” earned only $126 U.S. dollars in Friday’s debut, and only $618 for the entire weekend, marking a career low for the disgraced Hollywood star.
“Billionaire Boys Club” was filmed in 2015 and released with no publicity following a premium VOD release last month. The film brought in $126 dollars on Friday from eight locations. Four additional cinemas reported Sunday earnings, putting the final estimated weekend at $618, according to those with access to grosses.
Put another way, that’s a per location average of roughly $56 for the weekend. If going by the average 2018 ticket price to date of $9.27, that means about six people showed up at each theater, on average.
If the current national ticket price average of 9.27 dollars is used, that means that no more than 6 people bought tickets to see the crime drama. Billionaire Boys Club played in theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Orleans, the Hartford/New Haven area, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland and Sarasota, Florida
Titles that debut first on VOD aren’t generally big draws at the box office, but Billionaire Boys Club is faring particularly poorly. The fate of the film was left in serious question after Spacey was accused last fall of sexual assault by a number of men in the U.S. and England. Netflix and MRC fired him from House of Cards, while Ridley Scott replaced Spacey in All the Money in the World.
Earlier this summer, distributor Vertical Entertainment said it would go ahead and release Billionaire Boys Club on VOD and in cinemas.
“We hope these distressing allegations pertaining to one person’s behavior — that were not publicly known when the film was made almost two-and-a-half years ago and from someone who has a small, supporting role in Billionaire Boys Club — does not tarnish the release of the film,” Vertical said in a statement at the time. “In the end, we hope audiences make up their own minds as to the reprehensible allegations of one person’s past, but not at the expense of the entire cast and crew present on this film.”
Directed by James Cox and starring Kevin Spacey, Ansel Elgort and Taron Egerton, the film is based on a true story of a group of wealthy boys from Los Angeles during the early 1980s.
The two-time Oscar winner for 1995’s crime thriller “The Usual Suspects” and 1999’s drama “American Beauty” has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse by some men. As a result, he was fired by the streaming service, Netflix, from the cast of the last season of “House of Cards.” He was also edited out of the film “All the Money in the World.”
Meanwhile, in the latest shocking twist involving the #MeToo drama, Asia Argento, the Italian actress who was one of the first to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, secretly paid off a young male actor accusing her of sexual misconduct in the months after her revelations about the disgraced movie mogul.
According to a report in The New York Times, Argento paid former child actor Jimmy Bennett $380,000. Bennett claims that in 2013, a then 37-year-old Argento assaulted him in a California hotel only two months past his 17th birthday. The age of consent in California is 18.
Argento and Bennett worked together on the 2004 film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, which Argento also wrote and directed. Bennett, a 7-year-old at the time, played Argento’s son, who is neglected and sexually assaulted by a boyfriend of Argento’s character.
The Times reports that it has seen the legal documents that lay out Bennett’s assault claims and the payments arranged between his lawyers and Argento’s.
Bennett’s lawyers sent a notice of intent to sue Argento in November, claiming that the sexual assault was so traumatic that it affected his mental health and stymied his acting career. The notice was sent to Richard Hofstetter, the late Anthony Bourdain’s longtime lawyer, who was representing Argento at the time.
Shortly after the report was made public on Monday, Argento’s ally Rose McGowan publicly distanced herself, tweeting, “I got to know Asia Argento ten months ago. Our commonality is the shared pain of being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. My heart is broken. I will continue my work on behalf of victims everywhere.”
And with the first cracks now appearing in the credibility of some of the #MeToo leaders, will a counter move emerge next, in which men accused of sexual harrassment dare to speak up?
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