A brief marketing analysis of why the Ben Hur remake flopped, based on some of the 8 Ps.
In the summer of 2016, Ben-Hur was released. This movie was a remake of the legendary 1959 movie, Ben-Hur. It was a tremendous flop for a variety of reasons. Utilizing some of the 8 Ps of marketing, I’d like to discuss some of them:
Product
To start with, the quality of the remake has been judged by critics as very low. The Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 26% of the possible 100%. The audience score is higher, with 66% of those who saw it, liking it, but that is still a relatively poor rating.
The product launched into an already crowded group of remakes and reboots and sequels in summer 2016. Many of which had disappointed audience. After facing so many disappointing releases of the summer, launching the movie at this time may have depressed turnout.
Promotion/Place
The movie missed completely with Millennials: Of my group of friends, the only advertising that reached any of them relating to the movie were television ads that ran during the Olympics, which was not viewed by many millennials to begin with, missing a significant portion of the movie going base. A Variety story confirms that the social media presence for the movie was weak. Ultimately 94% of the opening audience was above 25.
People
The movie was also marketed heavily to a segment of people based on their religious beliefs, thinking that they would be the segment who would most connect with the movie. The variety article claims that this did improve the film’s numbers in religious communities some, but that it may have turned off a lot of the non-religious audience. The outreach to the religious at the last minute also came off as inauthentic, but by that point, the die had already been cast.
Performance
All of this added up to one of the most disappointing box offices in quite some time. Bringing in only 10 Million in opening weekend of its 100 Million budget.
Sources:
http://variety.com/2016/film/news/ben-hur-box-office-bomb-1201841796/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ben_hur_2016/