FIFA's 'United Passions' Earns $607 Opening Weekend Box Office

Due almost entirely to our spoiler-laden review, no doubt—and not at all because it is a fantasy film in a soccer kit—FIFA's movie about the glorious beginnings of corruptible soccer executives, United Passions, opened to a $607 box office in ten theaters nationwide this weekend. Just so we're all clear, here, that is not good. Sure, they were sort of hamstrung from Jump Street, only opening in ten theaters and making a $30 million dollar movie with Sepp Blatter as the protagonist, but all the same, $607 is not a lot of money.

That's $60 per theater. Which shakes out to about 6 people, on average, sitting in a dark room watching a movie where Fisher Stevens gets significant airtime in a film not named Short Circuit. It could be even less if they saw it in Imax or 3D, since those tickets are even more expensive. You never know.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

I am fascinated by this person. I hope it's just a regular person and not a critic or a person consumed by irony. I hope it's just one person, who woke up on a hot—but dry!—Phoenix morning and thought Saturday…the day I see the FIFA movie.

To put this in some kind of context, I looked up the worst movie openings of all time. There doesn't seem to be a category for limited releases such as this, so the next best is "Wide" releases, which is 600 or more theaters. We're not here to compare numbers—because it's not even close—we're just here to marvel at movies we've never heard of, including Translymania, National Lampoon's Gold Diggers, Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, and GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords.

FIFA's legacy will forever be running the beautiful game into the dirt, and then making a movie that drew fewer eyes than something called GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords.

[THR]