Fly Me To The Moon Crashes To The Ground With $10 Million Opening Weekend

If you've noticed that most romantic comedies seem to be going direct to streaming these days, there's a reason for that. Rom-coms have suffered perhaps more than any other genre at the box office since the advent of streaming. Perhaps it's because they're typically cozy comfort movies perfect for watching on the couch at home, and don't really demand the spectacle of the big screen. Whatever the reason, "Fly Me to the Moon" — a '60s-set charmer starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson — is the latest rom-com to be dead on arrival.

Directed by Greg Berlanti (best known as one of the architects of the Arrowverse), "Fly Me to the Moon" is an alternate history tale set during the lead-up to the Apollo 11 launch. Johansson plays a marketing specialist hired to manage the mission's image in the public eye, and Channing Tatum plays the director of NASA. As sparks fly between them, they become embroiled in a secret plot to shoot a fake "backup version" of the moon landing, in case the real mission fails. The film reportedly had a production budget of $100 million, which is pretty stratospheric for a rom-com.

"Despicable Me 4" easily held on to the box office top spot with an estimated $44.7 million added to its domestic total this weekend, and Osgood Perkins' horror movie "Longlegs" debuted in second place and set a new opening weekend record for Neon. But "Fly Me to the Moon" barely made it into the top five in its opening weekend, coming in behind "Inside Out 2" and "A Quiet Place: Day One," both of which have been out for several weeks. 

You may ask why, given the shaky performance of romantic comedies at the box office, any film studio would green light one for $100 million — even with an additional Space Race hook. Well, a traditional film studio with a dependence on box office ticket sales probably wouldn't. But "Fly Me to the Moon" was produced and financed by Apple Studios, which is still in the early stages of trying to establish a foothold in Hollywood. The strategy so far has been to invest in big, expensive projects that are unlikely to break even, like Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" and Ridley Scott's "Napoleon."

"Fly Me to the Moon" was originally planned as a direct-to-streaming Apple TV+ release, but after test screenings came back with positive audience responses, the decision was made to move it to a theatrical release. While theatrical distribution always comes with some extra expenses, the important takeaway here was that the movie was originally greenlit on the assumption that it wouldn't generate any box office revenue at all. 

Given that Apple posted a total quarterly revenue of $119.6 billion in Q1 2024, any money made at the box office by "Fly Me to the Moon" is a drop in the bucket anyway. Like its fellow tech giant Amazon, Apple has been on a mad spending spree in its efforts to secure a place in the film and TV business. So far progress has been ... slow. As of March 2024, Apple TV+ was still in seventh place among leading streaming services, with just 8.47% of market share according to JustWatch. It still has a long way to go before becoming a top contender — but then again, those astronauts had a very long journey to the moon. Anything is possible!