Although Barbie and Oppenheimer tried their hardest to prove otherwise, for the most part memes don’t make money. The Last Voyage of the Demeter would have been hoping to buck the trend, too, but the early prognosis is not looking good.
On the plus side, the fact the reinvention of the legendary bloodsucker has captured the internet’s imagination and become the newest viral sensation ensures that people are definitely aware that it exists, even if the box office projections have already made it clear that Dracula on a Boat is not going to entice a lot of them to pay for a ticket.
Having scored a weak $750,000 in previews, Demeter is on its way to an opening weekend in the $7-10 million range, not good news when the production reportedly set Universal back an estimated $45 million. In fact, it’ll be the second Dracula do-over this year to tank in multiplexes, with Nicolas Cage’s Renfield suffering a similar fate not more than a few months ago.
In fact, if you want to make the most damning comparison imaginable, then it’s unfortunately Morbius. Jared Leto headlined a horror-tinged vampiric movie that spawned a mountainous volume of memes, only to watch it burn up in the sunlight of the box office. You’d hope Universal aren’t dumb enough to send Demeter out twice over to die, though, but it’s a disappointing return whichever way you want to look at it.
Having spent over 20 years stuck in development hell, it’s not a stretch to say that maybe it wasn’t worth it in the end.