Only Three People in Britain Went to See Shia LaBeouf’s New Movie

While he’s made more headlines recently as an avant-garde political performance artist — and even more headlines as a guy who gets arrested at political performance art installations — it falls to Shia LaBeouf to intermittently remind the people of America that he is an actor, first and foremost. He’ll win our love (tennis pun!) later this year as John McEnroe in the double biopic Borg vs. McEnroe, but presently, his war drama Man Down has tromped into theaters after its 2015 festival debut. The bad news for The Beef is that not a whole lot of people saw the critically derided, low-profile indie. And in Britain, they’re prepared to put a number on just how hard Man Down flopped. And that number is three.

The Hollywood Reporter states that three people in Britain went to go see Man Down. As in, more than two but fewer than four. This represents a sharp uptick in viewership from the report issued yesterday stating that one solitary soul had purchased a ticket for the drama about an Afghanistan veteran struggling with PTSD on the home front. Following yesterday’s embarrassing box-office notice, the film’s U.K. take has now risen from a paltry £7 to a handsome windfall of £21. The THR item mentions that the film was only playing once a day on one screen in one theater — not exactly the conditions in which sleeper hits are born — but even so, this must come as something of a blow to LaBeouf and his costars, Kate Mara and Gary Oldman.

At the very least, LaBeouf and director Dito Montiel (who’s been having a rough streak of bad luck lately — his previous film Boulevard was all but buried after star Robin Williams died prior to the theatrical release) can go crying to their half-million stateside gross. And I can’t imagine this matters much to LaBeouf. If anything, this could provide great material for his next cockamamie performance art stunt.