M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass entered the Martin Luther King weekend with some lofty expectations, as some estimates placed the film’s debut in the $60 to $70 million range. Unfortunately, that Glass wasn’t shatter-proof, as the latest twist-filled film from Shyamalan generated only $40.5 million over the Thursday to Sunday frame.
Shyamalan (a director with a more than inconsistent track record for both box office and critical successes-anyone remember his adaptation of The Last Air Bender?) faced virtually no new competition over the long weekend, as studios believed the hype and intentionally kept their films away from the sequel to Split and Unbreakable. The reviews for Glass certainly didn’t help its performance, as the film currently clocks in with a 35% fresh rating (and 24% from top critics) on Rotten Tomatoes. Combine those stats with a lukewarm audience response, with a “B” grade from exit polling company Cinemascore, and you have a recipe for disaster only rivaled by the director’s brief foray into the seedy world of education reform (in 2013, Shyamalan tried to cash in on the trend with his expose entitled I Got Schooled). Glass should continue to turn a modest profit, as it faces little competition over the next few weeks, but Shyamalan’s performance may serve as a bump in the road for his comeback tour (and no one is asking for sequels to After Earth, The Village, or Lady in the Water). read more
