Sarah Palin documentary goes to DVD after mediocre box office returns

The box office fate of Sarah Palin's bio-documentary The Undefeated has uncannily mimicked the political fortunes of its subject: after a bright start, much publicity and high hopes the film has fizzled out to disappointing reviews and waning popularity.

An opening weekend on limited release saw The Undefeated bring in $63,000 from 10 screens. But despite showing on 14 cinemas the following weekend of 22-24 July, box office takings slumped 60% to just $24,664.

It turns out that The Undefeated was more like the unattended.

According to boxofficemojo.com – which dubbed The Undefeated "deflated" – in 10 days the film grossed just over $100,000 from 13,000 ticket sales and estimated that average audience size was just 15 customers per screening during its second weekend in theatres.

Undetered, the movie's producers announced that the documentary following Palin's political career would soon be available on pay-per-view and video on demand from 1 September, followed by DVD release in October, because of what director Stephen Bannon described as "overwhelming demand".

For Palin fans, Walmart will also sell an exclusive "special edition" DVD with additional content.

While the film's producers and supporters were talking up the documentary's success, Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo poured cold water over some of their claims:

Even before The Undefeated bottomed out in its second weekend, the movie was a bust in its first weekend, but its boosters latched onto two stats: per-theater average and ranking among political documentaries. The classic tactics of movie spin include bragging about per-theater average and declaring a high ranking in a niche category. The funny thing is that Undefeated's opening didn't rate highly on either front, making the spin extra-egregious.

Within the minor political documentary sub-genre, The Undefeated's $6,532 opening weekend per-theater average ranked 33rd out of the 91 limited openings tracked over the past 30 years, normalized for ticket price inflation. Among all documentaries, it was in the middle of the pack. Hardly worthy of hyperbole. Even if it had little to no advertising, Undefeated had far more media coverage than most other political documentaries and independent releases could ever dream of. The awareness was there.

Certainly The Undefeated got blanket news coverage that most cinema releases would kill for. But the box office bust may have been helped by the critical reviews that accompanied its opening, such as this one from the Los Angeles Times:

The Undefeated, the new political image-branding effort from ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, is really a troop-rallying campaign infomercial as imagined by Michael Bay: hero-worshipping, crescendo-edited at a dizzying pace, thunderously repetitive and its own worst enemy as a two-hour, talking-points briefing.