Ridley Scott’s Sci-Fi Flop Exits Theaters With a $6 Per-Theater Average

The wait was apparently not worth it, with Ridley Scott's first new sci-fi movie in nearly a decade turning out to be one of the biggest box-office bombs of his illustrious career. Scott hadn't made a sci-fi movie since Alien: Covenant, which was released in 2017. It grossed around $240 million worldwide against a reported budget of around $100 million. This was deemed not robust enough for the franchise to continue in its current state. Scott, who helped create the iconic Alien series back in the 1970s, recently expressed interest in continuing it with a sequel to Covenant. However, given how poorly his last few movies have performed, especially his latest, his ability to secure big-budget backing may be on shaky ground.

In the last decade or so, Scott has directed box-office underperformers such as Napoleon, The Last Duel, Gladiator II, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and All the Money in the World. While Gladiator II made around $460 million globally, its profits were undercut by a massive reported budget of around $300 million. Scott's latest movie, which cost about as much as his highest-grossing hit — The Martian — appears to have reached the end of the road with less than a 10th of that film's $630 million global haul.