Unwanted box office record for Ben Affleck's Live By Night

Ben Affleck’s woefully-received ‘Live By Night’ has scored itself at least one box office record.

Though it might not be the one he was after.

The period gangster flick has notched up the biggest third-week drop in cinemas screens ever recorded, plummeting from 2,822 screens in the US to only 163.

The stats come from Box Office Mojo (via Screen International), which records such data from all the way back to 1982.

The loss of 2,659 screens in a single week (that’s 94.1%) tops that of previous record-holder, Eddie Murphy’s ‘Meet Dave’ from 2008, the sci-fi comedy in which Murphy played a space craft which looks like Eddie Murphy, piloted by 100 tiny humanoid aliens, one of which was played by Eddie Murphy.

That movie, as well as losing its shirt at the box office, dropped from 3,011 screens in 488, while last year’s ‘Hardcore Henry’, in third place, dropped from 3,015 to 519.

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at ComScore, told Screen International: “After a couple of weeks if the movie isn’t playing very strongly, then there is the option for theatres to go to the studio and say look, ‘we need to free up some shelf space here’. With the first couple of weeks generally they’re not going to have much wiggle room.

“For some studios it may be more advantageous – if a movie is played out after three weeks – to get it on home video quicker and get that revenue stream coming in from the small screen. Sometimes it’s the smarter move to shorten the theatrical window.”

‘Live By Night’, which Affleck starred in, adapted the screenplay for, and also directed, has done terrible business so far.

Having cost $65 million (£52 million) to make, it’s only made back $20.8 million (£16.6 million), and that doesn’t count for the huge amount also spent on advertising and marketing.

It’s said that the movie could lose Warner Bros a cool $75 million (£60 million) in all.

Critics did not warm to it either – the movie sits with a decidedly poor 35% ‘fresh’ rating on reviews aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

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