Aussie shark film Bait struggles in opening box office weekend
Australian sharksploitation film Bait has struggled to find an audience at local cinemas in its opening weekend at the box office.
Directed by Kimble Rendall and distributed by Paramount, the 3D film about a group of customers stranded in a shopping mall after a tsunami strikes, only to be harassed by a great white shark, was filmed in the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast.
The film took $365,000 according to the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia.
Is this set at Bondi Junction?
Paramount has got Madagascar 3 in the bag. Everything is handed to them from their Hollywood studio like every other major release. Why would they even bother try to help out an Aussie film? All the talk about supporting the local industry, blah blah blah…
And to top it off, releasing Bait on school holidays against a gazillion other kids film.
That would almost be original had not 15,436 sceenwriters not done basically the exact same plot before….
Maybe they should call it ‘Sharks in a Mall’ for the US release.
Bait is a complete waste of taxpayer’s subsidy. Derivative, B grade genre picture. If you’ve got nothing original to add to the genre forget it. And these films can be made a lot cheaper in the US anyway. The big winner is the international sales agent who takes a 25-30% commission on every sale and the loser is the taxpayer as this film has no hope of recouping its budget.
Looks great!
sorry i dont think i’ve ever seen a shark attack movie where the victims were trapped in a flooded mall after a tsunami – sounds very original to me and i liked the trailer. i wish them well.
Gave it a chance, saw it with an open mind, a numbing terrible experience. Paying to see this horrendous film is bad enough but paying extra for 3D, i want a refund.
Actually the team at Paramount would have put more hours into working on Bait than Madagascar 3 @guy. If you’ve ever worked for a film distributor you’d know that working on Australian film takes 5 times more effort, patience and creativity than working on a US release.
Perhaps if film tickets weren’t so ludicrously over priced and Australian cinema goers hadn’t been exposed to years of abuse by Australian film makers then perhaps, just perhaps, Australian films would do better at the box office….even if they are a derivative B-grade genre picture.
I much preferred Kimble’s work in the XL Capris in the late ’70s.. Mind you … great company name – Killer Bald Men (think about it folks).
That film heroine didn’t seem to find an audience either… So passe
I still want to see it despite all the (predictable) negativity heaped on by the industry – sometimes audiences like to watch big dumb movies and I’ll totally admit that this includes me. If we had to watch smart sophisticated movies all the time that would be pretty gruelling, especially when you sometimes just want explosions and visceral thrills and stupid action and horrendous one liners. Awesome!
Also I’m hoping no-one takes any of these comments to heart, as Harry above has provided a pretty outdated (and under researched) view from the sidelines. Those sorts of absurd sales commissions are not really seen anymore, and in this case the sales agent is also a producer on the film. So not sure how his theory stacks up there.
Kudos to Gina for the reply. My god, 20 million dollars it cost!!! Even at 2 millions budget you would cringe at that return. Perhaps a better time to release it is around Halloween time, or near a summer beach season. Not in the first week of spring school holiday. I think BAIT is a great title, regardless of the film quality.
Hi THE GREY GHOST – Pretty sure this was filmed at Coolangatta on the Gold Coast. At least that’s where my sister saw a heap of extras running from a pretend tsunami…