(TINY) PAYCHECK

Ben Affleck Rings in New Career Low as ‘Hypnotic’ Wide Opening Fizzles

The Robert Rodriguez-directed thriller was hampered by COVID-19 production woes, a disastrous rough-cut screening in Berlin, and the total collapse of the studio funding it.

Audience members were getting very, very sleepy watching Hypnotic this weekend… The few who chose to show up, that is. The big-budget independent thriller, which stars Ben Affleck as a hardboiled detective, crash-landed in 2,118 theaters to scrape in just $940,000 on its first day, according to Deadline. By Sunday evening, that total stood at just $2.4 million, putting it in sixth place at the box office. Directed by Robert Rodriguez and shot in 2021 for a reported $65 million, Hypnotic’s long journey to the middle was hampered by COVID-19 production woes, a disastrous rough-cut screening in Berlin, and the collapse of main financier and U.S. distributor Solstice Studios, which crumbled just as the film was going into production. (Executive producer Gareth West eventually swooped in and snapped the movie up through his company, Ketchup Entertainment, according to Deadline.) The Hollywood Reporter noted that a paltry $2.4 million would mark the lowest wide opening of Affleck’s career, a dubious honor previously given to 1998’s Phantoms, which collected $3 million in its opening weekend.