Bro I agree with you wholeheartedly. This was just me taking a swipe at Rock because well, I like to....but I am actually looking forward to seeing this film and will definitely watch it on the big-screen. I know I was making some off-handed remarks about the film based on the trailer but after hearing some of the buzz around the film I am very much looking forward to seeing it. If anything, Rock should be applauded for finally taking a serious role and not producing the same old popcorn crap he's been producing for the last however many years. I get your point about the marketing, I would actually say A24 (the studio producing this) has done some very creative and neat things when it comes to marketing like making this 2000's-style
online game or having director Benny Safdie promoting the film by quite literally
wearing a poster lol. But the problem is that they can only do this kind of cute and creative guerilla marketing-type stuff because they are not a big studio with alot of money. I seriously doubt they have the money to run TV spots on TKO and AEW shows.
Yes bro, $50 million is nothing. Most big-budget films can spend an amount equal to or even greater than their production cost just on marketing. For context, One Battle After Another had a production budget of around $140 million, and with marketing and promotion, the total ballooned to about $300–320 million. That film is likely going to struggle to even make its money back. Smashing Machine's entire budget was about $40-50 million. And my guess would be that the marketing budget was inside $10-15 million.
And I'm 100% with you this. It's a damn shame to hear that this movie bombed. Not because I wanted The Rock's career to tank (I really don't care either way) but because the next time anyone tries to do a serious movie about MMA, the risk-adverse studio execs will point towards this. At any rate, the least we can do is support original films like this one by watching them in the cinema.