Charlie St. Cloud Movie Box Office: Zac Efron Weepy Is Universal Pictures’ Latest Dud

Charlie St. Cloud movie with Zac Efron: Burr Steers’ supernatural melodrama has become Universal Pictures’ latest box office dud, following Robin Hood, The Wolfman, Green Zone, Repo Men, and Leap Year.

Charlie St. Cloud movie box office: Sentimental Zac Efron star vehicle makes Universal cry

July 30–Aug. 1 weekend box office (cont.): Trailing Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller Inception, Jay Roach’s lowbrow comedy Dinner for Schmucks, and holdovers Salt and Despicable Me (more details further below), Universal Pictures’ supernatural sentimental melodrama Charlie St. Cloud, starring High School Musical franchise icon Zac Efron, debuted at a lowly no. 5 on the North American (U.S. and Canada only) box office chart.

Directed by Burr Steers, Charlie St. Cloud brought in a paltry $12.4 million from 2,718 theaters according to final studio figures found at boxofficemojo.com.

International fans to the rescue?

The silver lining: There’s always the chance that Zac Efron’s international fans will come to the rescue of this $44 million production (as always, not including marketing and distribution expenses). After all, they did provide a strong boost to the Steers-Efron collaboration 17 Again ($72 million overseas) and to the sleeper hit High School Musical 3: Senior Year ($162 million overseas).

One assumes that Universal, which has suffered a whole array of box office duds this year – Robin Hood, Green Zone, The Wolfman, Leap Year, Repo Men – is ardently hoping they will do so again.

Forget Remember Me

Now, comparisons between Charlie St. Cloud and the Robert Pattinson romantic melodrama Remember Me – which opened to $8.1 million in early March – aren’t exactly apt.

The latter was a $16 million production; a “little movie” that, merely on the strength of Pattinson’s Twilight Saga popularity, received a wide release (2,212 theaters) via the mid-sized Summit Entertainment.

Charlie St. Cloud movie cast

Besides Zac Efron as the titular young man who must choose between pursuing a relationship with the woman he loves or keeping an out-of-body promise to his deceased younger brother – both brothers had died in a car accident, but the older one only temporarily – Charlie St. Cloud also features Charlie Tahan as the baseball-playing dead brother, Amanda Crew as Charlie’s romantic interest, and Oscar winner Kim Basinger (L.A. Confidential, 1997) once again as a bereaved mother (see The Door in the Floor).

Also: Goodfellas’ Ray Liotta as a paramedic who succeeds in reviving only Charlie, Augustus Prew, Donal Logue, Tegan Moss, Dave Franco, and Chris Massoglia.

Craig Pearce and Lewis Colick were credited for the adaptation of Ben Sherwood’s 2004 novel The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud.

Where were the fans?

Update: This time around, Zac Efron’s fans were (almost) nowhere to be found, as Charlie St. Cloud ultimately took in $31.2 million domestically and an embarrassing $17 million (apparently incomplete) internationally. Worldwide total: $48.2 million – a sizable flop in relation to its cost.

Its top international markets were Germany ($2.2 million), Australia ($2.1 million), the United Kingdom/Ireland ($2.1 million), Spain ($1.8 million), and Mexico ($1.4 million).

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore: Box office dud features former James Bond Roger Moore as M.E.O.W.S. HQ head Tab Lazenby (an homage to Bond actor George Lazenby). Kitty Galore is a spoof of Pussy Galore, played by Honor Blackman in Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery.

Top Six movies: Kiddie comedy adventure bombs

Rounding out the Top Six movies on this past weekend’s domestic box office chart were:

• At no. 3, Phillip Noyce’s action thriller Salt grossed $19.5 million (down 46 percent on its second weekend). Cume: $71 million. Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
• At no. 4, Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin’s computer-animated comedy Despicable Me grossed $15.5 million (down 35 percent on its fourth weekend). Cume: $190.3 million, making it Universal’s sole sizable hit so far this year. Voice cast: Dinner for Schmucks’ Steve Carell and Jason Segel.
• At no. 6, Brad Peyton’s spy comedy Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore debuted with $12.3 million from 3,705 venues. Cast: Chris O’Donnell and Jack McBrayer, and the voices of James Marsden, Christina Applegate, Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Michael Clarke Duncan, Neil Patrick Harris, and veteran Roger Moore (whose movie career goes all the way back to the 1940s – e.g., Perfect Strangers / Vacation from Marriage). Distributor: Warner Bros. Budget: $85 million. And that means, this Warners release is a monumental bomb.

“Charlie St. Cloud Movie Box Office: Zac Efron” endnotes

It’s now clear that Lisa Cholodenko’s family comedy-drama The Kids Are All Right is not on its way to becoming the “lesbian Brokeback Mountain.” Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, and Josh Hutcherson star.

Unless otherwise noted, “Charlie St. Cloud Movie Box Office: Zac Efron Weepy Is Universal Pictures’ Latest Dud” box office information via Box Office Mojo. Budget info – which should be taken with a grain of salt – via BOM and/or other sources (e.g., the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Screen Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline.com, etc.).

Comments about Charlie St. Cloud, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, and other titles being hits/profitable or flops/money-losers at the box office (see paragraph below) are based on the available data about their production budget, additional marketing and distribution expenses (as a general rule of thumb, around 50 percent of the production cost), and worldwide gross (as a general rule of thumb when it comes to the Hollywood studios, around 50–55 percent of the domestic gross and 40 percent of the international gross goes to the distributing/producing companies).

Bear in mind that data regarding rebates, domestic/international sales/pre-sales, and other credits and/or contractual details that help to alleviate/split production costs and apportion revenues are oftentimes unavailable, and that reported international grosses may be incomplete (i.e., not every territory is fully – or even partially – accounted for).

Also bear in mind that ancillary revenues (domestic/global television rights, home video sales, streaming, merchandising, etc.) can represent anywhere between 40–70 percent of a movie’s total take. However, these revenues and their apportionment are only infrequently made public.

Zac Efron Charlie St. Cloud movie image: Universal Pictures.

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore movie image: Warner Bros.

“Charlie St. Cloud Movie Box Office: Zac Efron Weepy Is Universal Pictures’ Latest Dud” last updated in January 2023.