POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was financed by Universal for $21 million and The Lonely Island mockumentary opened as R-rated counter-programming to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows and Me Before You. Popstar received positive critical write-ups, but Universal did not do much in the way of marketing the picture. Perhaps taking a cue from their minor successes with micro-budgeted Blumhouse Productions, the marketing for Popstar was mostly in digital form, with only 795 national TV spots going into release. Mockumentaries have been absent from the big screen for some time and the most successful in the format has been Best In Show back in 2000 ($18.7 million box office with a budget under $10 million).

With the penny-pinching P&A spend, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was tracking for an under $5 million debut weekend and pulled in $4,698,715 with a $2,033 per screen average. It placed #8 for the weekend led by Ninja Turtles. The pic took a 64.3% second weekend nosedive to $1,678,730 and promptly lost most of its theater count. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was pulled out of release after only three weeks with a domestic cume of $9,496,130. Universal would see back about $5.1 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would not even cover the modest P&A expenses.

Popstar saw a blink and you miss it release in the UK, where it cumed all of $40,904. It was sent straight to video everywhere else.