#The Last Duel May Be The Last Movie Of Its Kind

I have no silver lining to discuss today. I have no good lessons to be gleaned from this movie’s unfortunate performance. “The Last Duel” is likely going to go down as perhaps the last movie of its kind as Hollywood doubles down on streaming and gets far more careful about what projects get big budgets. The fact of the matter is, these sorts of movies were increasingly tough to sell long before the pandemic. Just look at Ridley Scott’s own career, where movies like “Kingdom of Heaven” and “Exodus: Gods and Kings” dramatically underperformed. We’re far removed from the days of “Gladiator” making $456 million at the box office and going on to win Best Picture at the Oscars.

Could it be argued that this movie had a slightly irresponsible budget? Maybe. But it’s not like Disney spent $250 million on this thing like they did with “The Lone Ranger.” At $100 million, if this movie, with this cast, had made somewhere between $250 million and $300 million worldwide, it could have been a hit. That was not necessarily an unreasonable expectation. But times have changed. Odds are, any movie of this ilk in the future will be made by Netflix or another major streaming service, only to get a token theatrical release to qualify for awards. That’s the harsh truth.

Disney, from my vantage point, did a fine job marketing “The Last Duel, “and Scott has said as much himself. He did, however, in speaking to Marc Maron on the “WTF” podcast, blame the whole thing on millennials.

“I think what it boils down to — what we’ve got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these f*****g cellphones,” Scott said. “The millennian [sic] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you’re told it on a cellphone.”

Is the man right? No, probably not, but he has every right to be annoyed with the state of moviegoing and what types of movies can and cannot succeed in the dramatically reshaped global marketplace we’re now living in.