LaBeouf’s new film Man Down took a measly amount on its opening weekend, but he’s not the only famous face to fail badly at the box office

Some of you might know that Shia LaBeouf still makes films, despite his reputation as an art-pop prank gone haywire, a kind of weaponised James Franco. Actually, that’s an exaggeration. One of you might know that Shia LaBeouf still makes films.

Man Down, LaBeouf’s new film, opened in the UK last week, and its opening weekend theatrical gross was £7. Not £7m. Not even £700. But a mere £7. Given that an adult ticket in my non-London cinema costs £12.60, it is safe to assume that the only person who saw Man Down last weekend was a solitary toddler with an NUS card who somehow qualifies for a state pension. Admittedly, the film was only shown in one cinema, in Burnley, before it was given a wider VOD release. Still, it probably took less than the projectionist at the cinema earned while it was on.

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If you can afford Man Down the luxury of not adjusting for inflation, its opening weekend gross puts it level with the 2004 Polish drama My Nikifor, which also made only £7. But LaBeouf should take heart: some of the world’s biggest stars (and Danny Dyer) have had to endure at swing and a miss at the UK box office. Here are some others.

Run for Your Wife (2013): £602

Run for Your Wife begins with a Rolf Harris cameo and goes downhill from there. It has a tedious plot, a bad cast, is ineptly filmed and contains a theme tune so abject you have to assume it was recorded by a sociopath. It is – and this is saying something – the worst film Danny Dyer has made. It only scraped £602 on its opening weekend, but my guess is that the few dozen people who paid to see it left the cinema disappointed.

Dark Tide (2012): £90

Dark Tide is a bad Halle Berry film. It isn’t the bad Halle Berry film where she plays a limp leisurewear superhero. Or the bad Halle Berry film where she plays an office temp who is also a vigilante super-detective. It isn’t the bad Halle Berry movie where she murders scores of innocent people in pursuit of an abducted child. Or the bad Halle Berry film where she does something extremely NSFW with a turkey baster full of hot sauce. No, this is the bad Halle Berry movie where she plays a shark whisperer, who develops a phobia of sharks but still leads a pack of shark hunters to a place called Shark Alley. You could say it did badly (the BFI lists its opening weekend gross at just £90) – but I’d argue it didn’t do badly enough.

Motherhood (2010): £88

Motherhood was a $5m-movie starring Uma Thurman, who at that point was an A-list actor, albeit one on the wane. It made less than £100, causing the film critic Barry Norman to exclaim: “Good God. I have never heard of anything like this before.” There are plenty of possible explanations for why Motherhood failed so catastrophically – lack of promotion, the distributor’s lack of confidence – but the most likely reason is that it’s an insufferably middle-class whine stuffed into the clothing of a weak romcom.

The Colony (2016): £47

Hands up who wants to see Emma Watson play a German lady from 1973 battling against a preacher and possible child molester who indirectly works for Augusto Pinochet? No? What if I told you that, despite all this, Watson keeps her plummy British accent? Still no? Well, what if I told you that Empire called it a “grotesque miscalculation that disrespects the memory of those who perished in one of the darkest episodes in recent history”? Nope? Never mind. The Colony opened for one daily matinee screening in Hull, Widnes and Burnley, and even then nobody bothered to watch it.

The Chumscrubber (2005): £36

Even though it starred Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Jamie Bell and Allison Janney – and cost $10m to make – only a handful of British viewers saw The Chumscrubber in a cinema. Maybe that’s because people just weren’t in the mood for a comedy-drama about suicide that particular weekend. Or maybe it’s because nobody wanted to say the word ‘chumscrubber’ out loud. Either way, nobody remembers that the film was ever made.