Emma Watson’s Latest Film Makes Just £47 At The UK Box Office

Emma Watson’s latest film, thriller The Colony, made just £47 at the box office in its opening weekend in the UK. In her first lead role since Harry Potter, Watson stars as a young woman in Pinochet-era Chile who enters a notorious cult to rescue her abducted boyfriend, played by German actor Daniel Brühl. The film was released through video on demand (VOD) on Friday and only screened in three cinemas, The Guardian reported, which most likely explains the low box office figure. It premiered at Toronto film festival last year and has received mixed reviews from critics, including two stars from The Observer, an audience rating of 65% on Rotten Tomatoes and an IMDB rating of 7.1/10. It was described as having “plot-holes the size of Saturn’s rings” by The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, who also gave it a two-star rating, but praised it for shedding light on a little-known story. It’s obviously a blow for one of the world’s most popular actresses to suffer box-office embarrassment like this, but perhaps the distributors' emphasis on a VOD release points to a change in our viewing habits. Rather than forking out £20 for a ticket at the local cinema, we’re increasingly opting to watch films from the comfort of our own sofas when the option is available. Other films, such as Al Pacino’s latest thriller Misconduct, also look set to make more money from home streaming than cinema distribution, The Guardian reported. In Watson’s next role, she’ll star alongside Ethan Hawke in Regression, a psychological thriller, before playing Belle in the highly-anticipated remake of the much-loved Beauty and the Beast, out next March. It seems unlikely that will suffer the same box office fate.