He might be one of the most enduringly popular action stars of the 21st Century, but it would be fair to say that 2023 has hardly been a banner year in the career of Jason Statham.
Sure, he showed up in box office smash hit Fast X, but that was only for a single scene and the profit margins on Universal’s $714 million-grossing gravity-defying epic were rendered razor thin by a $340 million budget plus additional marketing and distribution costs.
Ironically, hardly anybody watched the best of his four features to release in 2023 after Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre was quietly shuffled onto streaming with barely a marketing campaign to speak of, but Statham’s inconsistent annum has just gotten significantly worse after the review embargo lifted on EXPEND4BLES.
With a current Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of only 13 percent at the time of writing, the sequel that features the bald-headed martial artist taking top billing and producing is already the worst-reviewed big budget follow-up of the year. What did it snatch the crown from, you may ask? Unfortunately, it was Meg 2: The Trench, which saw the bald-headed martial artist taking top billing and executive producing.
The giant shark epic has at least come within touching distance of $400 million in ticket sales, but with EXPEND4BLES tracking for a franchise-low opening weekend having already gotten off to a disappointing start overseas, Statham could be staring a huge flop squarely in the face in what’s proven to be a year to forget given the unwanted accolade to have been hung around his neck.