One lonely filmgoer helped Shia LaBeouf's movie make a record $8 at the UK box office
Hands up: Who's seen the latest Shia LaBeouf movie Man Down? You know, the messy war drama that the New York Times called a "sadistic and ghoulish spectacle," that widely-panned release currently enjoying a 15 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 26/100 on Metacritic?
No one? Well, it did even worse in the UK.
Only one person went to see Man Down when it opened last weekend in a single theatre, the Reel Cinema in Burnley, Variety reports.
That single individual would have paid £7, or $8.70, according to ComScore, in what the company's senior media analyst deemed a potential Guinness World Record. Not exactly a budget-recouping success.
The single showing happened concurrently with its release on digital platforms where it presumably fared a little better. The film also reportedly made some $454,000 in the U.S., but you wouldn't know that from its sorry Wiki page Tuesday.
LaBeouf has long since stepped away from hugely successful movie releases like Transformers, the fourth Indiana Jones film and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in favor of more indie films and his artier projects.
In December 2015, he invited people to touch his soul, just over a year ago he spent 24 hours in an elevator at Oxford University, and in January he started up a four-year anti-Trump live stream which resulted in his arrest, was taken over by alt-right trolls and eventually closed after a few weeks.
Tim Chester was Senior Editor, Real Time News in Los Angeles. Before that he was Deputy Editor of Mashable UK in London. Prior to joining Mashable, Tim was a Senior Web Editor at Penguin Random House, helping to relaunch the Rough Guides website and other travel brands. He was also a writer for Buzzfeed, GQ and The Sunday Times, covering everything from culture to tech and current affairs. Before that, he was Deputy Editor at NME.COM, overseeing content and development on the London-based music and entertainment site. Tim loves music and travel and has combined these two passions at festivals from Iceland to Malawi and beyond.
