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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Paramount’s The Running Man, released November 14, 2025, with Glen Powell as Ben Richards, underperformed badly in theaters. It opened second in North America with a domestic opening of $16,495,564, lost most of its audience within three weeks, and had grossed $69,486,523 worldwide in Box Office Mojo’s release record against a reported $110 million production budget.
The short answer is a cumulative one: a soft opening, a tough weekend against an established franchise sequel, and a fast drop in attendance afterward. Critical reaction about tone may have added to the muted response, but it cannot be shown to have caused the result. The numbers also do not say how much money the studio lost, and that distinction matters for anyone using the word “flop” casually.
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The key box-office figures
The table below collects the main figures and where each one comes from. Totals in public databases change as films run, so treat these as the values recorded in the cited sources, not as final lifetime numbers.
| Measure | Figure | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic opening weekend | $16,495,564 across 3,534 theaters | The Numbers, database record |
| Sunday opening estimate | $17 million | Associated Press, opening-period estimate later superseded by the database record |
| Competing opening | $21.3 million (domestic) | Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, Associated Press opening-weekend report |
| Estimated worldwide opening | $28.2 million | Associated Press estimate, opening period |
| Second weekend | $5,719,864, down 65% | The Numbers |
| Third weekend | $3,714,143, down 35% | The Numbers |
| Fourth weekend | $1,180,586, down 68% | The Numbers |
| Domestic gross | $37,815,641 | Box Office Mojo, release record |
| International gross | $31,670,882 | Box Office Mojo, release record |
| Worldwide gross | $69,486,523 | Box Office Mojo, release record |
| Reported production budget | $110,000,000 | The Numbers; Associated Press reported the same figure at opening. Excludes marketing and distribution costs |
Why “flop” needs careful definition
Box-office reporting is easy to misread, especially for anyone thinking in terms of personal budgets or business profit. Three distinctions matter before you draw any conclusion about the film’s finances.
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Gross is not what the studio keeps
The worldwide gross is the total of ticket sales reported in the box-office databases. Theaters keep a share of those sales, and the studio receives a smaller portion, usually called rentals. The $69.5 million figure is therefore not the studio’s revenue, and it is not profit.
The budget is not the full cost
The $110 million is a reported production budget. Marketing, prints and distribution, and other expenses fall outside it, so the total cost of releasing the film is higher than the budget alone. Any calculation of a loss needs the studio’s internal accounting, which is not public.
Rank #2
Compare like with like
Domestic figures should be compared with domestic figures, worldwide with worldwide, and both over the same reporting window. A worldwide opening should not be set against a domestic total. The worldwide gross of roughly 63% of the reported budget is a useful sign of underperformance against that budget, but it is a ratio, not a profit or loss.
Why the opening was weak
Four factors, none of which can be fully isolated from the others, explain most of the commercial story.
Rank #3
- Genre: Science Fiction; Action / Adventure
- Number of Discs: 1
- Playback Duration: 120
- Rating: R
- Director: Edgar Wright
A difficult weekend against a franchise sequel
The film placed second behind Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, which Associated Press reported as winning the weekend with $21.3 million domestically. The Running Man opened across 3,534 theaters, so distribution was not the constraint. Competition for the same audience was. Associated Press also reported that more viewers chose the franchise title that weekend.
The opening was small relative to the reported cost
A $16.5 million domestic opening and an estimated $28.2 million worldwide opening are modest starts for a film with a reported $110 million budget. Opening weekends are the strongest signal of early demand, so a weak one leaves a large gap to close through later weeks.
Rank #4
- Factory sealed DVD
Attendance fell quickly
Second-weekend attendance dropped 65%, followed by a 35% decline in week three and a 68% decline in week four. This pattern left little room for a slow build, which is what a film with a modest opening would need to recover.
Creative choices drew criticism
Critical reaction is one more factor, though its weight is hard to measure. The next section covers it in detail.
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What audience signals show
Associated Press reported PostTrak polling and audience composition for the opening weekend. These are useful as descriptions of how audiences responded, but they are not explanations.
- Recommendation: 58% of PostTrak respondents said they “definitely recommend” The Running Man, compared with 63% for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.
- CinemaScore: Both films received a B+.
- Audience composition: Women made up 37% of ticket buyers for The Running Man, compared with 54% for the competing film.
The gap in recommendation scores is modest. The composition difference is larger, but the reporting does not explain why the audiences differed, and it does not show that any particular demographic caused the underperformance.
How critical reaction fits in
Jake Coyle, the Associated Press film critic, reviewed the film and wrote that “Edgar Wright’s new big-screen adaptation is fittingly but awkwardly timed.” He also wrote that “Wright’s movie has flashes of flamboyance that help, but it struggles to mix such violent science fiction with funny, over-the-top farce.”
These are one critic’s assessments of tone and structure. They may help explain why the film did not generate stronger word of mouth, but they are not audience-wide evidence, and they cannot be used as proof of box-office causation.
What the evidence does not establish
- No single cause. The sources establish a weak launch, a competitive weekend, and quick declines. They do not establish which factor mattered most.
- Star power and director reputation. The opening shows that a recognizable lead and filmmaker did not guarantee a large opening here. That is not evidence that Powell lacked appeal or that marketing failed. The public figures do not show how much marketing was spent or how it performed.
- Final profitability. Without the studio’s accounts, neither “profitable” nor “lost money” can be stated from box-office figures alone.
- Home-video and streaming. Paramount’s listing shows a home-video release date of December 16, 2025. This article does not confirm current formats or streaming availability.
For readers who want to check the figures themselves, the most useful steps are to pull the domestic and worldwide totals from both Box Office Mojo and The Numbers, note the date each was recorded, and compare the film only with releases from the same window and territory.
Quick Recap
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