How Will The Expendables 4 Do? A Box Office Prediction

The Expendables 4 (styled The Expend4bles) is due out September 22. Just how is it likely to do?

The consistent underperformance of big franchise action films this year seems ground for pause here--with this going especially for films banking on depleted nostalgia for '80s-era pop culture. (Top Gun 2 was an exception, helped considerably by breathless media cheerleading and weak summer competition--and the contention supported by how the delusions of Indiana Jones 5 playing like Maverick had the cold water of reality thrown on them this summer.)

It does not help that The Expendables franchise, even at its strongest, was a relatively marginal performer--which saw its North American grosses especially erode after the first film. Consider the box office for the first three films in current and inflation-adjusted dollars (the last, adjusted for July 2023 prices and included in the accompanying parentheses).

The Expendables (2010)--Worldwide--$274 million ($384 million); Domestic--$103 million ($144 million).

The Expendables 2 (2012)--Worldwide--$230 million ($305 million); Domestic--$85 million ($113 million).

The Expendables 3 (2014)--Worldwide--$215 million ($276 million); Domestic--$39 million ($50 million).

In inflation-adjusted terms the third movie made just one-third what the first did in North America a mere four years earlier. Now it has been nine years since that movie, with all that means for the franchise's pull waning, as pop culture moved further on from its recollections of the machine gun-packing heroes of the '80s. (Today anyone who really experienced the cultural moment that was Rambo: First Blood, Part II, or saw Commando in theaters, is likely over fifty.) It is even the case that to the extent that nostalgia is part of the sales pitch the pitch is weaker this time around (with, from that viewpoint, the weakest line-up yet, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis sitting this one out, and no equivalent to the inclusion of Mel Gibson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Harrison Ford or the others who popped up in the sequels).

The switch of the series back from a PG-13 rating to an R with its promise of an experience somewhat more like those '80s-era films, and the additions to the cast reported in the publicity, seem unlikely to make up for all that very much.

The result is that one could expect the fourth film to do still less well than the third--and this is indeed what Boxoffice Pro projects, anticipating a gross of $31-$45 million over its theatrical run (the low end of the figure less than the first Expendables movie took in on just its opening weekend in current dollars, before inflation). Moreover, unprepossessing as this already is I would not be shocked to see the projection fall in the weeks ahead (as has happened so many times this year with comparable films, like Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible).

That said, one may wonder if there will not be some relief from overseas--as, after all, the prospect of international ticket sales is likely a significant factor why, after the dismal domestic performance of the third film (a decade ago, failing to break the $40 million barrier), there is a fourth film at all. That movie was saved from being a more obvious disaster by the Chinese box office, the movie grossing in that country almost twice what it did in North America (Expendables 3 pulling in $72 million there, a sum accounting for a third of the worldwide gross, and over two-fifths of the international gross). Alas, the performance of American films in China is not what it was just a few years ago. (Consider, for instance, how the latest Mission: Impossible did in China, long a reliable market for the series. Where the sixth film, Fallout, pulled in $181 million back in the summer of 2018--more like $219 million today--Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning had pulled in a little under $49 million there at last count, with not much more to go.)

I see no reason to think Expendables 4 will be some exception to the unhappy pattern, with its domestic/international percentage split more likely to resemble that of the first film (38/62), or at best the second (27/73), than the third (18/82). Assuming the low end of the range projected for the domestic gross (circa $30 million), and a global take of about two-and-a-half times that, we end up with the movie's taking in about $80 million. Assuming the high end of the range ($45 million), and the more robust international response the second film got, one gets a figure in the vicinity of $170 million. The result is that a global gross of $200 million looks like a long shot, while the movie could plausibly fall short of $100 million worldwide--which is what the film's production cost alone has been reported as being, and all of which is likely to make the film a money-loser ruling out any Expendables 5.

Or would have, in normal times. The decisions the supposed "smartest guys in the room" are making these days leave me less and less clear on whether there is actually any thought process going on at all in the executive suites of movieland, even, amid the unceasing Dauriat-like crassness of "the biz," where the matter of expenditure and revenue is concerned.