In Germany, Pompeii debuts below a crowd-funded adaptation of The Office

By Dan Selcke | March 4, 2014 | 4:13pm

Aux Features Film

Pompeii, both the city and the movie, have had a very rough time of it. Paul W.S. Anderson’s historical disaster epic opened in late February to eye-rolls from critics, and a tepid reaction from audiences unwilling to take time from living Lego figures and superpowered princesses to watch the guy from Game Of Thrones fight a volcano. The movie, which cost around $100 million to make, took in just under $18 million in the U.S. Meanwhile, the German production company behind Pompeii, Constantin Film, hoped to recoup its losses in foreign markets, but the movie has fared just as poorly abroad, taking in about $5 million to date.

And now Pompeii has opened in Constatin Film’s own Germany, where it placed three notches below box office winner Stromberg, a movie adaptation of the German version of The Office that was partially funded through a crowd-sourcing campaign. In addition to raising the question of why no one has tried doing that with the American version of the show yet, Pompeii’s poor home field performance is something of an embarrassment for Constatin and for Paul W.S. Anderson, who’s worked with the production company on many of his recent films. As for star Kit Harrington, well, he’ll always have Westeros.