The Jem and the Holograms reboot has been pulled from U.S. theaters just two weeks after its release. The movie, based on the 1980s animated series of the same name, pulled in a record-breaking box office low of $1.37 million its opening weekend and barely reached the $2.1 million mark in its two weeks on screens. Fans of the original cartoon who were disappointed with the trailer can now rejoice that Jem has at least made history: as A.V. Club reports, it's the "first wide-release film to be pulled from theaters for underperforming."
Things did not start out well for the Universal film which stars Aubrey Peeples, Hayley Kiyoko, Aurora Perrineau and Ryan Guzman. It faced negative reviews from the get-go: the trailer itself was enough to deter Jem fans from seeing the film once it hit theaters. Now that it's out, the film has locked-in a consistent 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Most early reviews share the same complaints: first, the film does not remain true to the '80s show, thus alienating a core of dedicated Jem fans and deterring pretty much anyone who was alive in the '80s from going to see the film; secondly, the film did not bother to update the technology part of the narrative in order to be relevant to a teen audience that grew up with YouTube.
You know a film is really flopping when reviews are so quickly replaced by reports crunching the numbers. As Huffington Post reports, the film averaged a mere $545 at each of the 2,413 screens showing it. In the second week since its premier, the film continued to tank, only bringing in an average of $160 from each theater. To put things in perspective, the film did even worse than the Steve Jobs film which is reportedly performing poorly. However, Universal isn't exactly suffering, considering the fact that Jem only cost $5 million to make. Additionally, Universal is behind three of the year's top-grossing films: Jurassic World, Furious 7 and Minions.
As Business Insider reports, Jeff Bock, a box-office analyst with Exhibitor Relations explained that "this is unprecedented, and shows just how badly this film flopped. Not only is it the lowest-grossing debut for a studio film this year, but it's the worst all-time--by a considerable margin--for any film released in 2,000-plus theaters."
Fortunately, the original Jem and the Holograms animated series is currently on Netflix. Watch a clip from the original series, below.
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