Zac Efron’s We Are Your Friends flops dismally at the box office

The box office numbers are in for the weekend and Straight Outta Compton reigns at number one for the third straight weekend, but at the other side of the spectrum is the Zac Efron-led movie We Are Your Friends bombed in historic fashion. The Universal film is up to $134.1 million domestically.

Among the weekend’s other new entires, The Weinstein Co.’s political action-thriller No Escape, earning a B+ CinemaScore, grossed $8.3 million from 3,355 locations, putting it in a close race with Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation for the No. 3 spot. That also easily topped projections that had it debuting in the US$4 million to US$5 million range, although in retrospect those estimates were overly conservative given that advance ticket sales were unusually strong.

War Room reaffirms the potency of faith-based crowds, ranking along previous hits such as God’s Not Dead and Heaven is for Real but aside from its success, there was very little to celebrate.

Meanwhile, Christian drama War Room made a surprising debut, earning $11 million. The religious drama collected an estimated $11 million, already making profit from its $3 million budget.

The movie stars Efron as a struggling 23 year old disc jockey, desperate to graduate within the EDM scene and become a big-time record producer. Cole is trying to get a foothold on the epicentre of a huge global industry (which past year, the Association for Electronic Music valued at $6.2 billion U.S.)-not exactly fertile ground for rebellion.

Adding to this downward spiral is the Zac Efron starring We Are Your Friends. That’s the fourth-lowest debut ever for a film on over 2,000 screens, behind only The Oogieloves ($443k), Delgo ($511k), and the 10th anniversary reissue of Saw last October ($650k).

Not only did it finish in a lowly 13’th place with only $1.8 million – finishing below the far older Jurassic World, Ant-Man and Minions and barely placing above the disastrous Fantastic Four – it qualified as perhaps the worst opening of all time for a major movie.

“This was a passion project for Zac Efron, and we believe in him”, said Warners exec VP for domestic distribution Jeff Goldstein.