With a total opening day earnings of $1.8 million spread over 2,388 theatres across the U.S., Zac Efron's "We Are Your Friends" definitely bombed at the tills.
It averaged to $750 per movie house, making the movie where Zac plays a DJ one of the worst releases in American box office history, reports Entertainment Weekly.
Only two films performed worse than Zac's movie the past 33 years. These are "Doglieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure" and "Delgo" which both did not reach $1 million.
Given the poor first-day attendance of "We Are Your Friends," the New Zealand Herald reports that there are speculations the movie would not recover the $6 million cost.
On the opposite end, "War Room" brought in the Christian moviegoers and earned $11 million. Shown in 1,135 theaters, the film averaged almost $10,000 per movie house, reports Reuters. It was a low-budget film that cost the producers $3 million, meaning the producers netted $8 million.
Although Zac's performance and the film's energy got some thumbs up from critics, it was also panned. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a low 43 percent approval rating. Others found it boring.
LA Times's Mark Olsen finds the movie confused if it would be a sensitive drama of self-actualization of a playful party movie. It missed the mark on both counts, he says.
Brian Truitt of USA Today thinks the movie is "a 96-minute, stylized-within-an-inch-of-its-life music video with slow motion closeups on gyrating body parts, a PSA about the dangers of drugs and booze, pity sex in cars, a rather informative lesson in how to be a DJ, and Efron showering a bunch."
Zac has a mixed portfolio of blockbusters and so-so films insofar as box office revenue is concerned. His "Bad Neighbours" in 2014 grossed $264.8 million, while "That Awkward Moment" earned only $40.5 million. He is making a sequel of "That Awkward Moment."