Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep.

Warner Bros cast the usually reliable Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson as the leads in Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep and pitched the film to fans of Stephen King’s 1977 novel and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining.

So what could go wrong? Almost everything, as Mike Flanagan’s $50 million horror movie adapted from King’s 2013 novel was D.O.A. in Australia, the Us and the rest of the world last weekend.

It was a blah weekend in Oz despite a lively launch for Chinese drama Better Days and solid starts by Bollywood comedy Bala and Pedro Almodóvar’s Cannes Film Festival hit Pain and Glory.

Martin Scorsese’s $150 million Netflix-financed The Irishman opened at about a dozen independent cinemas. There were reports of sold-out sessions at some locations but as exhibitors are obliged to sign NDAs, we will never know the grosses.

The top 20 titles generated $10.2 million,...