Why White House Down Bombed At The Box Office Despite Olympus Has Fallen's Massive Success That Same Year

White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen were released at similar times and had almost identical plots, but only one was a box office success.

Olympus Has Fallen was a huge box office success, but White House Down, which had a similar premise and was released just three months later, was a major box office bomb. Released in June 2013, White House Down is an action movie directed by Roland Emmerich and follows John Cale (Channing Tatum), a Capitol Police Officer who has to protect the U.S. President, James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) from a terrorist group. That's eerily similar to another 2013 action movie, Olympus Has Fallen, which follows former Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), who also has to protect the U.S. President (Aaron Eckhart) from a terrorist group.

The success of Olympus Has Fallen led to an action movie franchise, including two sequels. The Has Fallen film series has made more than half a billion dollars, and now there is a TV show spinoff titled Paris Has Fallen in production. Additionally, the fourquel Night Has Fallen is in development with plans for three more movies after that (via Deadline). The White House Down series, on the other hand, started and ended in 2013. However, regardless of the movie's quality, the writing was on the wall about White House Down's box office failure, and there were tons of reasons why it flopped.

White House Down Made More Money Than Olympus Has Fallen But Bombed Because Of Its Massive Budget

White House Down actually had the higher gross of the two movies, but, ironically, based on their budgets, Olympus Has Fallen was a huge success, and White House Down was a bomb. Olympus Has Fallen grossed $170 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo), but it only had a budget of $70 million, leading to a profit for Millennium Films. While White House Down grossed a respectable $205 million globally, it had an inflated budget of $150 million. Based on the rule of thumb that a movie's marketing budget is equal to the production budget, the action flick likely left theaters still in the red.

White House Down's action sequences are much more explosive than the ones in Olympus Has Fallen, so it's obvious where the massive budget of the former went. However, along with the effects, while Olympus Has Fallen stars the bankable Gerard Butler, White House Down has the even bigger draw of Channing Tatum, who was at the height of his popularity at the time and would have come with a huge price tag. Co-star Jamie Foxx would have demanded a large salary, too. Unfortunately, investing so much into movie stars with a supposedly guaranteed audience didn't pay off, and that killed the chances of White House Down 2.

White House Down Was Too Similar To Olympus Has Fallen (Which Premiered Only 3 Months Earlier)

Movies with identical concepts often release around the same time. The most notable examples of this are the 1998 pairings of A Bug's Life and Antz and Armageddon and Deep Impact. One of those releases in each example was a lot more successful than the other, and that's no different with White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. White House Down was released just three months after Olympus Has Fallen, and given that their premises are so similar and specific, audiences simply weren't interested in seeing the same movie again.

Antz and A Bug's Life aren't just animated children's movies, they're animated children's movies about ants. White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen aren't just action movies, they're action movies about terrorists attacking the White House and the President of the United States being in danger. The two movies appealed to the same audience, but nobody wanted to see a film that was essentially the same as another released three months earlier. On top of that, given that White House Down was marketed directly after Olympus Has Fallen, the releases were likely confused as being the same movie by so many potential moviegoers.

White House Down Faced Bigger Box Office Competition Than Olympus Has Fallen

Unfortunately, White House Down also faced an uphill battle at the box office due to major competition, and it's more of a victim of its release date than anything. White House Down opened on June 28, 2013, which was the same release date as the Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock movie The Heat. While The Heat is a comedy, it's also an R-rated action movie, which pulled in a lot of viewers who would have otherwise spent money on tickets for White House Down. The Heat was a huge success, grossing $230 million with a $43 million budget (via Box Office Mojo).

Monsters University and World War Z were also released on June 21, 2023. Though Monsters University screenings wouldn't have been full of action movie fans, based on the animated movie's $744 million worldwide gross (via Box Office Mojo), it certainly negatively impacted White House Down. Thousands of ticket buyers would have also chosen between White House Downand World War Z, and thanks to the horror element and Brad Pitt in the lead role, World War Z grossed $540 million. Meanwhile, Olympus Has Fallen's only competition was The Croods, which was great counter-programming. That's ultimately why White House Down didn't become a franchise and Olympus Has Fallen did.