Your Highness Movie Box Office: One of Year’s Biggest Critical & Commercial Duds

Your Highness movie with James Franco and Danny McBride: David Gordon Green’s spoof of costume romantic/fantasy actioners can already be included as one of the year’s biggest bombs, both critically and commercially.

Your Highness movie box office: Starring James Franco and Danny McBride, critically lambasted spoof is one of year’s most notorious bombs

April 8–10 weekend box office (cont.): Opening at a lowly no. 6 on the North American (U.S. and Canada only) box office chart, David Gordon Green’s critically massacred Your Highness fared far worse than this past weekend’s other new releases (see further below), bringing in a paltry $9.36 million from 2,769 theaters according to final studio figures found at boxofficemojo.com.

Budgeted at a reported $50 million (as always, not including marketing and distribution expenses), this Universal Pictures release has no chance of getting even near that figure in the domestic market. International prospects are, at best, iffy.

In fact, despite the presence of Oscar nominee James Franco (127 Hours, 2010) and Oscar winner Natalie Portman (Black Swan, 2010), this spoof of titles like Ladyhawke, The Princess Bride, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy can already be listed as one of 2011’s biggest box office bombs.

There’s more: Your Highness has turned out to be Portman’s first flop of the year, following two popular star vehicles: Darren Aronofosky’s late 2010 ballet thriller Black Swan, one of the season’s biggest hits, and Ivan Reitman’s romantic comedy No Strings Attached.

Your Highness movie cast

The story of two royal brothers (James Franco, Danny McBride) out to destroy an evil wizard (Justin Theroux), rescue a captive princess (Zooey Deschanel), and save the kingdom of their father (veteran Charles Dance of Plenty and White Mischief), Your Highness also features Toby Jones, Damian Lewis, Rasmus Hardiker, Caroline Grace-Cassidy, Simon Farnaby, Deobia Oparei, and John Fricker.

Natalie Portman is seen in a supporting role as an avenging warrior.

Costar Danny McBride and Ben Best shared screenwriting credit.

Global disaster

Update: David Gordon Green’s Your Highness ultimately collected $21.6 million domestically and $6.4 million (likely incomplete) internationally. Worldwide total: A disastrous $28 million, even when taking into account that most major territories are missing from the Box Office Mojo chart.

Your Highness’ top international markets were the United Kingdom/Ireland ($2.8 million) and Russia/CIS ($1.8 million).

”Your Highness Movie Box Office” endnotes

Top Five titles

Curiously, four of the top five movies on this past weekend’s domestic box office chart had one-word titles: Universal’s live-action/animation hit Hop at no. 1, Focus Features’ woman-centered action thriller Hanna at no. 2, Warner Bros.’ flop remake Arthur at no. 3, and, marginally ahead of Your Highness, FilmDistrict’s supernatural horror thriller Insidious (with $9.37 million, down a relatively modest 30 percent on its second weekend; cume: $26.7 million) at no. 5.

Sony Pictures’ two-word-titled, “inspirational” Christian drama Soul Surfer was no. 4.

Unless otherwise noted, “Your Highness Movie Box Office: One of Year’s Biggest Critical & Commercial Duds” 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 Your Highness 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.

Danny McBride and James Franco Your Highness movie image: Frank Connor | Universal Pictures.

“Your Highness Movie Box Office: One of Year’s Biggest Critical & Commercial Duds” last updated in January 2023.