We hate to beat a dead kangaroo here, but that Australia is showing signs of becoming an epic flop. It's not even doing well in Australia! The country where it was filmed and takes place and was, we suspect, named after! Variety reports that the film has basically done good but not great business since it opened Down Under. Was it overhyped? Variety seems to think so:

There's been no reports of audience hysteria but a general perception that the hype has been overdone not just by the studio but by its many media partners each running their own campaigns.

Well yeah, the whole fate of the nation, its tourism industry anyway, was hinging on the booming success of this film, so it makes sense that lots of "media partners" hopped into the gooey pouch for a walkabout. But it just didn't pan out, even though it was the widest-ever release in Australia (a cute 643 screens) and made a high-for-Australia (but not nearly high enough) $4.9 million USD in its five-day opening weekend. Reporters were supposedly gleeful with schadenfreude as they reported that cinemas across the land were only half-full. Not the lines-around-the-block barnstormer that Fox was hoping for, you can be sure.

We guess it's just not possible anymore—people, what with the internet and all, are just too cynical—to manufacture a phenomenon. It has to come much more organically than this.

No one wants to eat Vegemite anymore.