And that was WITH spectacular reviews and an RT score in the high 90s.
Paramount will assume that Annihilation will make the most bang for its buck in the U.S., then get it in front of international audiences using Netflix’s in-place distribution model at a fraction of the marketing costs.
When figuring out why it makes sense to do this, Paramount and Skydance likely looked to Alex Garland’s previous film, Ex Machina, which earned $25.4 million in the States, but only $11.4M overseas, according to BoxOfficeMojo.