Twilight may have catapulted them to fame but it seems like its lead stars Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner is having a difficult time making hit movies outside the successful franchise. The latest is Lautner’s Abduction which opened to bad reviews and no. 4 spot in the weekend box office earning $11.2 million.
Abduction is a $35 million movie and Lautner was supposedly paid $7.5 million for it. So its studio is counting on international audience which is part if the actor’s fanbase. But Lautner fared better than his peers. Pattinson’s Remember Me and Stewart’s TheRunaways did not exactly impressed with their box office earning domestically but was able to recover their investment because it is not as expensive to make as Lautner’s action movie.
Remember Me actually made back half its budget in its opening weekend. In the end, it more than tripled the budget. Water for Elephants grossed nearly $120 million worldwide off a $38 million budget.
Stewart’s film The Runaways including Welcome to the Rileys may be flop but thees are small films. Her upcoming movie Snow White and the Huntsman will prove her box office power.
Lionsgate said girls under the age of 18 graded the critically trashed film an A-minus. “That directly speaks to Taylor and his fan base,” studio exec David Spitz said today. “They love him.”
In Abduction, Lautner plays a teenager who learns his parents aren’t who they say they are when he sees his picture on a missing children’s website. Abduction also stars Lily Collins, Sigourney Weaver, Maria Bello and Freema Agyeman. The film is directed by John Singleton.
Abduction grossed $1.3 million in Australia and No. 1 in Argentina, Brazil and No. 2 in Venezuela.
The fourth installment, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part I, opens in theaters Nov. 18. Its previous three films grossed $1.8 billion globally.
