There were effective ideas here, but they never really take off, and the film's potential is squandered on a poorly written script, and the end result is one of
the weakest films in the franchise.
In fact, PA3 opened bigger and though it had the series»
weakest legs to date, it still ended up with a domestic gross close to the first
film and a
franchise - high worldwide take of $ 203 M. And while the production budget again rose, it was still kept to just $ 5 million, well under the competition and far less than the marketing costs of such a high - profile wide release.