If you've seen a comedy over the past month, then there's a good chance that you've seen the trailer for The Virginity Hit, a mockumentary concerning a group of friends trying very desperately to get their buddy laid. The film didn't look particularly good, but surely Sony wasn't expecting to score the fourth-lowest nationwide release of all time with their new film. Yeah: it was that bad. Read on for the details, my fellow film geeks...
You've probably heard the stories about Uma Thurman's Motherhood earning a whopping $130 over in England last year when it opened in just one theater, just as you've probably heard the stories about Zyzzyx Road-- the otherwise unremarkable Katherine Heigl-starring thriller that earned $30 when it opened. Well, you can now add the recently-released The Virginity Hit to that select group of "Films With Embarrassingly Low Opening Weekends at The Box Office": Sony's film earned just $300,000 on 700 screens this weekend.
Here's what they're saying at Box Office Mojo:
The other new nationwide release, The Virginity Hit, bagged an estimated $300,000 at 700 locations, which was one of the worst openings of all time, ranking as the fourth lowest-grossing for a nationwide release on record.
You're probably thinking, "Surely I've heard of films earning less money than that in a single weekend", and you're exactly right. The trouble, of course, isn't the total amount: it's the average of dollars-earned against the amount of screens it opened on. If you do the math, The Virginity Hit earned only $429 for every theater it played in this weekend. Compare that to Dinner For Schmucks, which earned over $700 per theater this weekend after being in release for over two months (and we all know how big of a hit Dinner For Schmucks was). That's a helluva low-opening. Fourth-worst ever, as BoxOfficeMojo.com has pointed out.
In case you're wondering, the only films worse were Transylmania, The Passion: Recut, and Proud American. For the record, The Virginity Hit has a 29% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing. That's not the worst average we've ever seen for a nationwide release-- The Last Airbender scored lower this summer and earned a helluva lot more money-- but it's cold comfort once you've seen those box office reports. Ouch.
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