PA Bill Number: HB335

Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.

Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...

Last Action: Removed from table

Last Action Date: May 1, 2024

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Penn and Neeson flops show audiences shunning anti-gun 'geri-action' heroes :: 03/24/2015

Sean Penn’s heavily-advertised “The Gunman” had a disastrous opening weekend, “bombing” with only a $5 million take, Box Office Mojo reported Sunday. Also fizzling is Liam Neeson’s “Run All Night,” which opened March 13, and has pulled in a tepid $19.7 million to date.

Those numbers are indicative of a bet that will not pay off for the studios and investors. Neeson’s latest outing had an estimated $50 million production budget, and has returned steady and significant drops in gross-to-date, with foreign receipts not even coming close to making up the shortfall. Costs for Penn’s misadventure appear to be held closer to the vest, with Wikipedia citing $40 million, albeit their source link does not substantiate that number.

“This subgenre has been dying a slow death in recent years,” Box Office Mojo observed. “With ‘The Gunman’ poised to lose most of its theaters heading in to its third weekend, look [for] it to wind up with a final total in the $10 to $12 million range.”

“Geri-action heroes” in formulaic shoot-‘em-ups have definitely had a good run, but it could be that changing demographics of movie-goers will shelve such projects for a while -- at least until the current crop of younger “action stars” ages and their same-generation fans want to live vicariously through avatars of their own.

Unknown is what effect Penn and Neeson running their mouths off in the press and alienating millions of potential movie-going gun owners has had on the willingness to spend hard-earned dollars enriching privileged belittlers of freedom. Both have made no secret of their contempt for guns and gun ownership, with the former maligning them as “cowardly killing machines” and the latter calling for UK-style gun bans in the U.S.

A significant number of American households own guns, and a significant number of those have disposable income allowing for regular entertainment expenditures. With word spreading that the actors have been going out of their way to disparage the right to keep and bear arms, it’s likely that accounts for some of the reluctance toward giving aid and comfort to Penn and Neeson.

What’s certain is, Astroturf pretensions notwithstanding, there aren't enough “grassroots” gun-grabbers to reward the actors for their "social activism" with break-even attendance. The same thing could be said about other businesses pandering to demanding MILMs and disrespecting gun owners.

True, it’s unrealistic to expect all gun owners to boycott everything that “progressive” Hollywood has to offer, but then again, they don’t need to. If enough decide this actor, or that hypocritical project he’s feeding off of, can make a good isolated example, setting one can have the much broader effect of inducing others to fall in line. The thing is, and this is something that has not been done anywhere near enough, the same tactic can be used to force politicians to do the right thing – if not out of principle than out of a basic survival instinct.