How Does 'Ben-Hur' Stack Up Against Its Legendary Predecessors?

It's official - the latest version of "Ben-Hur" is a bust.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the remake of the classic film flopped at this weekend's box office. The movie, which cost around $100 million to produce, collected just $11.4 million across the U.S. and Canada during its opening weekend.

The movie was co-produced by Viacom, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: VIAB) Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, although MGM picked up around 80 percent of the film's budget.

Viacom's stock was trading lower by more than 4 percent at $41.67 Monday morning.

How The Film Stacks Up

The latest "Ben-Hur" film received a low score of 28 percent by Rotten Tomatoes. The movie rating site cited choppy editing and CGI in its review.

By comparison, the 1959 classic starring Charlton Heston "ranks among Hollywood's finest examples of pure entertainment" and received an 88 percent rating.

Box Office Mojo doesn't break down the 1959 film's opening weekend ticket sales, but the film collected $848.68 million (adjusted for 2016 inflation) throughout its lifetime and ranks as the 14th most successful film based on this metric.

Finally, there was a 1926 release of the silent film called "Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ." Rotten Tomatoes noted the film wasn't only "one of the most expensive features of its day" but it "easily stands up to the later, technically superior version."

Rotten Tomatoes gives the silent epic a 100 percent score. It grossed more than $10 million against a $4 million budget.