M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender managed to muster up $3 million in ticket sales from midnight screenings last night according to a report from Deadline. While the total is only one-tenth of what The Twilight Saga: Eclipse made from midnight screenings, it is actually impressive given the critical reaction to the big budget summer flick.
At last check, The Last Airbender held a miserable 6% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. In other words, 94 out of 100 critics who wrote about the film counted on the site did not like it. That’s worse than Jonah Hex which thus far is this summer’s poster boy flop.
Young kids familiar with The Last Airbender television show generally don’t pay attention to Rotten Tomatoes and Paramount’s marketing is designed to drive them to the theater in droves as an alternative to Twilight Eclipse. Kids are also less fickle about acting and plot coherence, and are more likely to eat up the film’s abundant special effects. It still might take strong international business to overcome the estimated $200 million plus production and marketing costs Paramount incurred to bring Shyamalan’s first big budget project to the screen.
