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If any film is going to be front-loaded, it is going to be a Blade Runner sequel, with some portions of the moviegoing community panting for this one. Outside of that core group, though, Blade Runner gets a little softer. This is a standalone movie (not a franchise) that came out in 1982, and even with two re-releases, only grossed $32 million lifetime at the box office. The cast had some draw in Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, but Gosling has never opened a film to decent numbers on this own, and Harrison Ford hasn’t successfully opened a film on his own since the 1990s. At least Denis Villeneuve had The Arrival at $24 million and Prisoners at $21 million to his credit. An 89% fresh rating at RottenTomatoes helps, but other than being the sequel to an iconic (but old) film, this could be considered an overlong , brainy sci-fi flick.

On Friday night, I asked a couple of 20-somethings if they were interested in seeing Blade Runner 2049, and both looked at me, screwed up their faces and tried to defend why they weren’t interested. For me, it was telling that the Blade Runner was going to play to a smart, male 35-55 crowd, and unless word-of-mouth gets them there, not many either above or below that age group are going to run out to see this, if they see it in theaters at all. Most of the planet saw the original movie on DVD, anyway.

Weekend estimates for Blade Runner 2049 continued to fall over the remainder of the weekend. After the Saturday figure came in at $11.4 million, things were looking worse than Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott’s last sci-fi flick that was too expensive ($97 million) and under-performed. Blade Runner 2 lost the battle to Covenant on Friday by $15.3 million to $12.7 million, on Saturday by $12.7 million to Blade Runner’s $11.4 million, and on Sunday by $8.9 million to $7.4 million. That left Blade Runner 2049 feeling like a dying replicant, with a domestic opening weekend of $31.5 million, well back of estimates and Alien: Covenant’s debut of $36.2 million. From all reports, Blade Runner 2 is a much better film than Alien: Covenant, so where the Ridley Scott film failed to hit $100 million domestic, I think Blade Runner 2049 will. We know the reviews were good, and the Cinemascore was, well, okay. The Cinemascore tally put it at an A-, which is the same score the George Lucas Star Wars prequels earned (all of them), but at the same time, it’s the same score that The Matrix received when it came out. I think Blade Runner 2 will pick itself up, dust itself off, and show fabulous legs going forward.

So, what went wrong? Why didn’t Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to a film that is on many of the "best" lists of all time, including Roger Ebert’s list, the IMDb top 250, and Empire’s list, open to more than it did? Warner Bros. took an interesting approach with the marketing, giving very little plot detail away. For most films, one usually knows how they start and end via a 30 second TV ad, with Blade Runner 2049, I’m still trying to figure out who the bad guy is. I say maybe they protected it too much, and they may have relied on "free" advertising too much as well.

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