Free Republic

At the 11th hour, Lana and Andy Wachowski's sci-fi epic Jupiter Ascending is being pushed back from July 18 to Feb. 6, 2015. As a result, Liam Neeson's action movie Run All Night will now need to find a different home. That film had been set to open Feb. 6; a new date has yet to be announced. Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow co-financed Jupiter Ascending, which stars Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis. Insiders say the $150 million movie needed more special effects work.

It’s not very often that Hollywood unleashes two major theatrical bombs over the same weekend. But that’s what happened when “Jupiter Ascending” and “Seventh Son” both crashed and burned in U.S. theaters on Friday. Warner Bros.’ “Jupiter Ascending,” starring Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis, is quickly dropping in estimates to a thin $18 million weekend at the box office. With a budget north of $175 million, the Wachowskis sci-fi fantasy tentpole could lose tens of millions barring a dramatic turnaround overseas.

The Wachowski siblings’ “Jupiter Ascending” is not “The Matrix,” according to the majority of critics panning the science fiction spectacle starring Channing Tatum as an intergalactic bounty hunter and Mila Kunis as the oblivious heir to the universe. The Warner Bros. release has 31 percent “rotten” approval rating from 49 critics counted, so far, by Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately, even the 15 reviews the critic aggregator considers “fresh” aren’t very positive.

An instant candidate for the so-bad-it’s-sort-of-great hall of fame, “Jupiter Ascending’’ is totally bonkers, a sort of black-velvet-Elvis mash-up of “Star Wars’’ and every other sci-fi/fantasy movie of the past half-century right up to “The Hunger Games.” Look, there’s Mila Kunis as another chosen one, spending 10 percent of the movie cleaning toilets! A shirtless Channing Tatum in Mr. Spock ears, trying to pretend he doesn’t love Kunis! And poor Eddie Redmayne — up for Best Actor for “The Theory of Everything” — flamboyantly camping it up (oops, Oscar voting begins Friday) as an intergalactic real-estate mogul-cum-mass-murderer bent on marrying...