“Atlas Shrugged” Gets The Shrug At The Box Office

An adaptation of novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand’s controversial 1957 book Atlas Shrugged did not make a major wave at the weekend box office. Although it was the top-grossing limited release of the weekend, generating an estimated $1.7 million at 300 single-screen locations, the indie film is not doing the numbers expected for a film with such built-in hype and title awareness. The film, which is being released by micro distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures, looks unlikely to make back its $10 million production budget. The film trades have reported that the film was rushed into distribution to retain the movie rights before they reverted back to Ayn Rand’s estate and avoided working with a mainstream Hollywood distributor. The film’s marketing push is basically a grass roots campaign designed to capitalize on the ascendancy of the tea party movement, which has long embraced Rand’s vision of capitalism unfettered by governmental controls. The party’s true believers have been inundated with direct mail campaigns on the film, but so far, the expected turnout has mainly been a bust.

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