# Is "Ad Astra" bombing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 21, 2019, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604 "2019-09-21T07:52:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/141 "2019-10-09T01:19:24Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > But that’s my point: apply that metric to _this_ movie likewise. Figure, as you say, half of AD ASTRA’s domestic take (currently, under $44m) and a quarter of the foreign (under $68m) and as of today we’d be at, what, a little under $39m? Wiki puts its budget at somewhere between $80m and $100m (which, as you say, presumably doesn’t include marketing); so, what, how much more could AD ASTRA make and still, _by that same logic,_ fail to break even? Ah, got it, sorry. Ignoring marketing, figure it gets to 70m domestic box office, of which they keep 35m, add (call it) 15m in streaming/hard media of which they’ll keep about 10m, leaving about 35m international box office net; at a 25% net, that’s 140m international just to get to your lower bound, or 210m total theatrical take. Marketing is a little tricky because the distributors are different from the production companies, so there is likely some cost sharing. But they may need to cover something like another 25m. A lot depends on China! Fortunately some of the production companies were Chinese, so the market is available. ---
**Author:** ![eunoia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eunoia/32/97_2.png) [@eunoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eunoia)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/142 "2019-10-09T01:43:17Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > add (call it) 15m in streaming/hard media of which they’ll keep about 10m Quoted 2019-10-08 prediction. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/143 "2019-10-09T07:54:15Z")
> [@eunoia](#): > > More “comparables” lol. > > [https://i.imgur.com/fEOu20c.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/fEOu20c.jpg) Funny coincidence: the other movie being compared there is the one in my Blu-ray player right now (it came in the mail from Netflix Tuesday afternoon). > [@robby](#): > > This is a great summary of the film, **vertizontal**! I do have one nitpick of your summary: the film had nothing to do with going “To the Stars.” Instead, it was a glorified SETI project set on Neptune for reasons that were never explained. It was explained. I am not qualified to judge whether the explanation was valid, but what they said was that they had to go out that far to get past the light pollution of the heliosphere in order to get clear distant telescope images. > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > To add another nitpick, the whole rescue mission en route to Mars seemed implausible. I mean, how do the physics of that work out? Was Baboon Station also on its way to Mars? If so, did it just happen to leave the moon (or at least pass the moon en route Mars) a short time ahead of Pitt’s mission? Or were they just floating there between Earth and Mars, in which case, 1) what are the odds, really, of them being so close to their path (space is huge), and 2) just how much extra fuel did Pitt’s Rocket have to be able to accelerate/decelerate first to come alongside the station, and then to resume their trajectory to Mars? > > Yet another reason why I don’t think this movie is worthy of being labeled as hard sci-fi, as much as it pretends to be. Yeah, I wondered about the expenditure of fuel for that rescue mission as well. I would say that this movie qualifies as hard science fiction in relative terms because there is so little out there that truly does in absolute terms. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/144 "2019-10-09T13:32:35Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Was Baboon Station also on its way to Mars? Even more implausibly, why did it even exist? And why would Norway focus its space efforts on baboons? That was just one of a number of cases of “This would make a cool shot, let’s fit it into the story somehow” - along with the Mad Max buggies driven by the Moon Pirates, the swimming in a spacesuit scene to get to the underground (?) launch site on Mars, the parachute jump from the SETI antenna on Earth (why no safety harness?), why not send the Cepheus to Neptune with enough fuel to return (so there could be a cool riding-the-explosion shot, I know), never mind, let’s just move on. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/145 "2019-10-09T21:47:48Z")
I don’t see why primate research in space is so implausible. The Mars station commander found a way to sneak him under the launch site. It wasn’t underground. A safety harness would not have been safe, since the antenna itself was falling apart. They presumably did not have any way to bring enough fuel on Cepheus (or any other rocket) to be able to make the return trip from Neptune, considering that no one had gone to the outer planets in decades. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/146 "2019-10-09T22:35:04Z")
Pitt’s character, which he played well, was written as this very low-key guy. Nothing gets him really excited. His resting heart rate never gets above 80bpm. As such, since his character is in every scene, the movie never gets exciting, never gets a rush. I enjoyed the character development. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2019, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/147 "2019-12-24T11:25:37Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Ah, got it, sorry. Ignoring marketing, figure it gets to 70m domestic box office, of which they keep 35m, add (call it) 15m in streaming/hard media of which they’ll keep about 10m, leaving about 35m international box office net; at a 25% net, that’s 140m international just to get to your lower bound, or 210m total theatrical take. Bumping this to see if the time is right: looks like it’s now left domestic theaters, with a final stateside gross of just under $50.2m (so, $25.1m) and an overseas gross of just under $78m (so, $19.5m) — or is it still too soon to say? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2019, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/148 "2019-12-26T22:08:41Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Bumping this to see if the time is right: looks like it’s now left domestic theaters, with a final stateside gross of just under $50.2m (so, $25.1m) and an overseas gross of just under $78m (so, $19.5m) — or is it still too soon to say? Those numbers are no higher, and possibly less, than what could have been predicted with 2 weeks of release. I was curious how much it was going to make in China once it was released there as that could dramatically affect the overseas total. The answer: $0. Never released in Chinese theaters. Note that China imposes quotas on how many foreign films are allowed in theaters. I guess the studio took away it’s slot and gave it to another film. It is a complete dud. But the good news: It’s not as bad as _Cats!_ ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2019, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/149 "2019-12-27T13:05:06Z")
Wikipedia cites a September Deadline Hollywood article that predicted the movie “would lose Fox $30 million off a projected $150 million final worldwide gross“. As the numbers you guys are citing now are more than $20 million short of that mark, it is maybe a $40 million loss or thereabouts? Not great. They also cite a critic named Laura Dean Mandel, with whom I am unfamiliar but who in my estimation nailed it: “While Ad Astra richly imagines practical and interpersonal aspects of settlement on the moon and beyond, the insights on human nature are on the simplistic level of pop psychology.“ Unfortunately the industry will probably associate the box office failure more with the realistic world building than with the simplistic pop psychology. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2019, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604/150 "2019-12-27T14:07:29Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Unfortunately the industry will probably associate the box office failure more with the realistic world building than with the simplistic pop psychology. ☹ Classic Hollywood blaming the wrong thing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-ad-astra-bombing/840604.md?page=7)