Want to know how to make a bomb?
Ask Matt Damon. It is such a shocker that his combination of bad science and bad moralizing results in bad box office.
His anti-frakking movie “Promised Land” bombed at the box office.
Fracking gets natural gas out of the ground, but it isn’t bringing people into movie theaters.
Big stars and political controversy didn’t translate into a significant box-office haul as “Promised Land,” a new movie exploring environmental concerns about the gas-production method known more formally as “hydraulic fracturing,” fared poorly in its nationwide opening.
The film, which Matt Damon co-wrote and stars in, took just 10th place at the weekend box office, with $4.3 million in ticket sales, according to The Los Angeles Times.
It was also released at the same time that somebody leaked a study for NY Lawmakers that showed the practice is safe and another report that showed it has resulted in the lowest carbon emissions since 2007.
I wonder if this movie will even make back the emissions used to make it. From what I can tell, there seems like a lot of emissions.
January 7, 2013 at 7:14 pm
I have serious issues with fracking, drilling, pipelines, and radio towers — none of this is happening on my muddy bit of land. C'mon, Big Oil and Big Communications; I need some extra income here.
January 7, 2013 at 11:54 pm
There are predictions that with Smart Drilling (aka frakking), California might actually be able to pay off their debt!
January 8, 2013 at 12:10 am
"This movie is all about how this particular industrial process is environmentally hazardous"—yeah, uh, true or not, that just spells "box office poison" to me. I'm pretty sure the movie-going public hears that fact, and says to itself, "Dude, there is a better than 80% chance most of this film's run-time is impassioned discussions at public-safety board hearings. Thrill, thrill."
PS. Given what "fracking" means, and its use in Battlestar Galactica as a substitute for the F-word, can we conclude that the BSG civilization is fond of really disturbing euphemisms?
January 8, 2013 at 8:59 pm
Every landowner I've ever known in Kansas was ecstatic if minerals or oil/gas was discovered beneath their wheat crop. Recently, the determination to go after the deposits in the Mississippi Lime beds beneath western Kansas was cause for celebration. I'm not sure if our governor thumbed his nose at the White House when he said it, but he commented that we could be assured of energy independence from this gas/oil field. So every time I saw Damon's movie advertised, I had to laugh at his (Damon's) naivete.