Margot Robbie and Alexander Skarsgard’s 8-year-old adventure film had everything it needed to be a hit, but flopped at the box office

2016 The Legend of Tarzan It was a critical and commercial failure, although it had many of the ingredients that could have made it an adventure classic. The film, starring Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan and Margot Robbie as Jane, was a retelling of the story of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ iconic character. Tarzan is a multimedia icon and his story was adapted for the screen as early as 1918, in the silent film. Tarzan of the Apeswith more than four dozen adaptations to follow, including Disney’s 1999 Oscar-winning animated film Tarzan.

The 2016 title is the most recent Tarzan film to reach the big screen, and Its general reception may be one of the reasons the property has lain dormant since then on the big screen for nearly a decade. In addition to probably not making a profit in theaters, it was panned by critics and met with apathy from the general public. At the time of this writing, the film still has a dismal Rotten Tomatoes score of 35% from critics, with a slightly better but still rotten score from 58% from audiences.

The Legend of Tarzan Failed to Meet Its Huge Budget

The film cost much more than many of its competitors

Although its box office performance was likely reduced in the wake of negative reviews, Legend of Tarzan reviews, the 2016 film still made a lot of money. The title grossed US$357.2 million worldwide, becoming the 23rd highest-grossing film of the yearsurpassing many prominent titles including Trolls, Star Trek Beyond, The Conjuring 2, Resident Evil: the final chapter, Ghostbustersand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

However, despite its high gross value, The Legend of Tarzan probably failed to make money. Typically, a film needs to recoup two and a half times its budget to make a profit. As the film cost US$180 million to produce, its break-even point was probably somewhere around $450 millionmeaning it likely fell short by almost $100 million. Thus, many securities that had lower revenues made better profits, including The Conjuring 2which grossed $321.8 million against a much smaller budget of $40 million.

The Legend of Tarzan Wasted a Great Cast and Popular IP

It also starred a two-time Oscar winner

Although the Legend of Tarzan cast has achieved even greater success since 2016, already had a solid foundation with Skarsgård fresh from True Blood and Robbie recently having his breakthrough in The Wolf of Wall Street. The cast was also full of well-known names.including Samuel L. Jackson, Djimon Hounsou and Christoph Waltz. The director, David Yates, was also coming off a strong box office run with the final four Harry Potter films. However, the film’s budget and reviews appear to have prevented it from being the substantial success it might otherwise have been.