A perfectly-timed movie, presenting FIFA president Sepp Blatter as a valorous anticorruption crusader, has raked in $607—six hundred and seven dollars—at theaters in America.
The movie, United Passions, cost about $29,000,000 to make, with most of the financing provided by FIFA itself.
It stars Tim Roth (!) as Blatter, who took over as president in 1997, and Sam Neill (!) as the predecessor who hired him. The film portrays FIFA as a noble but flawed organization, finally knocked into shape by Blatter's insistence on rooting out corruption.
The film has received some tough reviews. Some have called it FIFA propaganda and others say it's chock-full of unintentional campiness. The Times' Michael Rechtshaffen wrote the movie "comes across as a squirm-inducing heap of propaganda at its most self-congratulatory." The New York Times wrote: "'United Passions' is one of the most unwatchable films in recent memory, a dishonest bit of corporate-suite sanitizing that’s no good even for laughs."
In the real world. Blatter announced his resignation last week, after Swiss and U.S. authorities raided the organization and arrested numerous officials.
Not all is lost: according to Bloomberg Business, the flick made $178,000 in other markets. So only about $28.8m is lost, which is nothing new when it comes to FIFA and other people's money.
