Harold And The Purple Crayon Is The Big Baffling Box Office Disaster Of The Summer

Things have been looking up at the box office as of late, with movies like "Inside Out 2," "Deadpool & Wolverine," and even Neon's indie horror hit "Longlegs" lifting us out of a pretty dreadful situation. Unfortunately, the rising tide doesn't always lift all boats. Sony's "Harold and the Purple Crayon" hit theaters this past weekend, instantly becoming one of the biggest misfires of the year thus far. The only saving grace is that we're talking about a mid-budget movie and not one with a full-on blockbuster budget. Even so, things are looking rough with no reason to believe they're going to get much better.

Director Carlos Saldanha's "Harold and the Purple Crayon" opened to just $6 million domestically while playing on more than 3,300 screens. It placed at number six on the charts, placing behind "Inside Out 2" ($6.7 million), which was on its eighth weekend in theaters. This live-action take on Crockett Johnson's beloved children's book of the same name was also playing on far more screens than Pixar's latest. To make matters worse, the film only pulled in $3 million internationally in its debut, meaning its global opening stands at just $9 million. Against a $40 million budget (before marketing), that's brutal.

For the sake of comparison, it's probably going to end up in a similar range as Lionsgate's flop "Arthur the King" ($7.6 million opening, $25 million domestic finish) or the faith-based "Ordinary Angels" ($6.1 million opening, $19.1 million domestic finish). The difference is that both of those movies were much cheaper to make. We're also seeing that "Harold" is probably going to have limited international appeal, meaning Sony can't depend on overseas audiences to bail them out. This one is going to bomb, no two ways about it.

The film centers on Harold (Levi), who can make anything come to life simply by drawing it. After he grows up and draws himself off the book's pages and into the physical world, Harold gets into some hijinks. Things take a turn when the power of unlimited imagination falls into the wrong hands, leaving it up to Harold and his friends to save the day.

IndieWire's David Ehrlich described the film as "bleak as hell!" That's probably not what anyone expected from an adaptation of a beloved children's book. "Though amusingly unexpected to watch Zachary Levi star in a kids movie about how god is dead, which yes, *is* what this kids movie is about for some reason," he added. That probably gets at the heart of what went wrong here: It's a baffling take on treasured source material. Critics largely hated it, with the film boasting a terrible 25% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It does, however, hold a 92% audience rating, so who knows? Maybe word of mouth will help pull it a little further away from disaster in the coming weeks.

"Harold and the Purple Crayon" has been in development for nearly 15 years, dating back to Josh Klausner ("Shrek the Third") penning a version of the script. Clearly it was a tough nut to crack, but the version Sony landed on hasn't resonated. In all likelihood, the studio opted not to go too hard on the marketing efforts for this one to help mitigate anticipated losses. That's just a guess, but it's hard to imagine anyone at the studio was surprised by this result.

This was, frankly, an odd choice for a summer movie anyhow. It got swallowed up by the competition, which is robust right now. It might have fared better in January where there was far less competition, or in the fall before awards season. For better or worse, it feels like Sony just dumped it.

While it wouldn't be fair to lay this movie's failure squarely on his shoulders, this is a bad blow for Zachary Levi. The actor has now had a very big box office flop to his name two years in a row. Last year, the actor was at the center of "Shazam! Fury of the Gods," which is very arguably one of the biggest superhero bombs of all time. $134 million worldwide against a $125 million budget is nothing shy of a catastrophe, particularly when we're talking about a sequel to such a roundly beloved movie.

Let's not over-address old wounds, but it is fascinating how quickly things have gone downhill for Levi in the aftermath of the first "Shazam!" After that, it seemed like he was poised to rocket up the A-list. Unfortunately, it hasn't panned out that way. 2021's "American Underdog" ($26.5 million box office/$25 million budget) certainly didn't help. Last year, he starred in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" and "Spy Kids: Armageddon," both of which went directly to Netflix, and all due respect, but neither of those movies had any sort of meaningful cultural impact.

All of that coupled with this latest flop has made it so he is probably going to be fighting for big projects, rather than being a go-to name. "Harold" isn't going to lose as much money as "Fury of the Gods," but it's going to lose money, and Levi is the actor at the center of the rubble. Fair or not, it's going to reflect poorly on him.

We spoke a bit more about this on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:

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"Harold and the Purple Crayon" is in theaters now.