A go-to film genre in the 1950s and '60s — and not a bad little money-maker throughout the 1990s — the Western is on the verge of being told by Hollywood to get out of Dodge.
The latest floundering occurred over the weekend, with "The Warrior's Way," an independently shot, martial-arts-infused genre offering that generated just under $3.1 million while opening at 1,622 locations and delivering a miserable C-minus Cinemascore grade.
That's the weakest debut so far this year by any film opening in more than 1,000 theaters.
Shot primarily in New Zealand and starring Korean action hero Dong-gun Jang alongside Kate Bosworth and Geoffrey Rush, the movie was distributed on service deal by Relativity Media, which isn't in line for too big a bath.
However, barring huge performance in the Far East, the film's primary backers — Fuse Media and Culture Unplugged Studios — will likely be in the red … but they're not alone, at least in genre terms.
"Warrior's Way's" floundering comes just six months after Warner watched Josh Brolin-led, sci-fi-themed Western "Jonah Hex" delivere an even weaker box-office run, topping out at $10.5 million worldwide on a $47 million production spend, not to mention more than that spent on prints and advertising.
Before that, in September 2008, Warner's "Appaloosa," a more straight-up approach to the classic film genre, directed and starring Ed Harris alongside Vigo Mortensen, grossed just $27.7 million worldwide on a $20 million negative bar.
Even 2007's acclaimed "3:10 to Yuma" starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale — while successful domestically for Lionsgate — lost money worldwide, grossing just $70 million globally on a production spend of $55 million.
The last Western to hit it big at the box office? That has to be Barry Sonnenfeld's 1999 comedically-tinged "Wild Wild West," a contraption-filled extravaganza starring Will Smith, Salma Hayak and Kenneth Branagh, which saw an impressive $222.1 million worldwide gross mitigated by an extraordinarily high $170 million production nut.
Nonetheless, into this baron box-office wasteland will soon ride Paramount's Coen Bros. remake of the 1979 John Wayne film "True Grit."
Starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and emerging go-to Western player Brolin, "True Grit" — which debutes Dec. 22 — comes with a moderate price tag of only $40 million.
However, odds of breakout box-office success don't look smaller than a prairie dog at this point, with the film tracking at only around 50 percent, give or take, in terms of the all-important "total awareness" metric (i.e. how many people know about the film).
Conversely, Universal comedy "Little Fockers" — which is arriving in theaters the same day — is tracking at around 80 total awareness across all four key demographic quadrants.
Meanwhile, nearly twice as many filmgoers list "Fockers" as their "first choice" as they do "True Grit."
Further down the line: DreamWorks' Jon Favreau-directed sci-fi/Western hybrid "Cowboys and Aliens," which will debut next summer with sizable fanfare.
