'The Condemned' Reviews, Box Office And More

Steve Austin's first starring vehicle, The Condemned, is off to a very poor start with the critics. WWE had confidence in the film and screened the film before it's release to critics with many in WWE believing that it's their best film to date. So far, with the critics, it's not.

RottenTomatoes.com, which aggregates movie reviews from around the country, currently has The Condemned at a 17%, which means that only 17% of the reviews that have come in so far have been positive. It's still early as there are only 12 reviews for the film, and that number may go up or down. Of the 12 reviews for the film so far, only 2 have been positive while the remaining 10 have been negative.

As for WWE's other films, it's currently performing slightly worse than The Marine starring John Cena, which had a 21% (with 39 reviews, 8 were positive) and much better than See No Evil's 8% (with 52 reviews, only 4 positive), although it's hard to perform worse with the critics than See No Evil.

The other film starring a wrestler, although not a WWE film, was The Rock's Gridiron Gang. While Gridiron Gang wasn't a hit with the critics, it still managed a 43%, with 94 total reviews and 40 of them being positive.

Of course, the most important thing is whether the general public likes the film. We currently don't have studio estimates for the movie, although it is expected to do much better in it's theatrical release than The Marine (which ended up faring much better on video and DVD). The Marine had a $7.1 million opening weekend, so anything less than $10 million for the opening weekend would have to be considered a disappointment. If the movie opens worse than The Marine, then it would have to be considered a major disappointment as The Condemned has a bigger budget than The Marine, with a budget of $20 million as opposed to $15 million for The Marine, and is considered by many inside the company to be their best film.

Keep checking back here at WrestlingInc.com over the weekend for more news on The Condemned, as well as for match by match results of WWE Backlash.