Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts publicly acknowledged Friday what has been largely ignored by the Hollywood media: "Battleship" is a big, bad, "John Carter"-sized flop. [Comcast owns a controlling interest in NBCUniversal, the parent company of Universal Studios, which distributed "Battleship."]
Speaking at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic decisions conference in New York City, Roberts said that the poor performance of the alien invasion film, which he labelled "an unfortunate, large miss," coupled with the failure of the comedy "The Five Year Engagement," will drag down earnings at NBCUniversal.
In contrast, in the same quarter last year, Universal was basking in the success of "Bridesmaids" and "Fast Five."
"This year you put that together, we'll have a negative quarter at NBCUniversal, as we've sort of told folks," Roberts informed the Wall Street crowd.