At a recent libertarian seminar I attended, there was a great deal of resigned grumbling about the poor performance, both commercially and critically, of the recent film Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. The first installment of a proposed trilogy spanning Ayn Rand’s 1,368-page novel was an epic, tragic, wasted opportunity, and the damage may be irreversible.

Rand devotees have long drawn sustenance from the contempt that both she and her “Objectivist” philosophy are held in the academy and the press. If she is sneered at by the leftist cultural elite, she must be getting something very right indeed. It would seem, therefore, that few Objectivist collars would have cause to be ruffled by the derision that met Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, released in late April and promptly removed from screens in the weeks after. Rogert Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times declared it to be “the most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault.”

But libertarians found themselves miraculously in agreement: the film really is awful. At the Liberty Alliance blog, James Kirkpatrick wrote:

The message of Atlas Shrugged was turned into something […] clichéd and predictable. It has been scrubbed, sanitized, and made ready for your next “Students for Liberty” meeting so you can encourage more people to vote for the likes of Gary Johnson.

Yet, at the very least, Rand fans thought, the buzz surrounding even a lackluster Rand movie would force her controversial ideas back under mainstream consideration, and popularize her books further, giving birth to a new generation of impassioned Objectivist teenagers ready to dismantle the state and enshrine pure capitalism. But so scant an impression did the movie make, few got wind of its existence, and Atlas Shrugged books sales failed to make their mammoth leap.

What with the spike in sales that did happen in the wake of the financial crash in 2008, when capitalism underwent (and survived) an existential crisis, and a limited but fervent fan base that would leave their apartments to see anything Rand related, an Atlas Shrugged movie must have seemed a sure bet. At the very least it might have attracted funding from some of the many Rand evangelists in America’s business and financial community.

But owing to various snubs from within the Hollywood liberal establishment, the production managed a measly total budget of $15 million, a cast of unknown actors, and a highly limited advertising budget – although it’s cause was taken up by the Tea Party movement and associated organizations such as FreedomWorks, which campaigned for the film to open in more theaters.

Opening on 299 screens in the United States, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 grossed $4,563,873. To lend this lilliputian performance some scale, consider that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 opened on 4,375 U.S. screens and grossed $273,539,281 and counting. Even with DVD and rental sales, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is unlikely to make its money back, rendering a future Rand movie (and an accompanying Objectivist renaissance in popular culture) a dim possibility.

Although Part II and Part III remain slated for release on April 15 in 2012 and 2013 respectively, producer John Aglialoro has recently cast doubt on whether production will even begin. In an interview with the Boston Globe he said:

I learned something long ago playing poker. If you think you’re beat, don’t go all in. If Part 1 makes [enough of] a return to support Part 2, I’ll do it. Other than that, I’ll throw the hand in.