Shrugged indeed

Atlas sucks: Failing film producer vows to give up - Salon.com

Last Monday, Tim Blair noted a Hollywood Reporter item detailing what a surprisingly (by independent film standards) strong per screen box office Atlas Shrugged (part the first) seemed to have for the first weekend. Might expand to a 1000 screens!

Hollywood Reporter didn't exactly figure on the fact that all of those who saw it on the first weekend represented the sum total of Ayn Rand fanboys in the United States, and you know, despite their disproportionate noise in political circles, there probably just ain't that many of them.

Hence it expanded to more screens (four hundred and something, not the 1000 the producer speculated on) and took about half the takings the next week.

So, that's a touch over $3 million, for a $20 million film.

Those figures are bad enough for the producer to wave the white flag. You could expect Salon (and me) to take pleasure from this, and we do:

And so its producer, an exercise equipment company CEO (I mean a DYNAMIC PRIME MOVER) who spent $20 million of his own money to finally put Rand's vision on the big screen, is giving up. The film will not expand to 1,000 screens. The second part of the trilogy will not be produced. (That is the real shame, here: The second part is where hundreds of people die horrifically of asphyxiation. And the best part is that they all totally deserve it for being "looters.") (No one will miss part three, which would've just been a three-hour-long speech.)

And so John Aglialoro, the film's producer, will "go Galt" and retire to the desert, where his ability to manage a company that produces exercise equipment will allow him to create the perfect society.

Sounds to me like it may not even get a cinema release here. Sinclair won't be left in the dark by himself after all.