After two Transformers films and nonstop Internet chatter about how hot she is, Megan Fox finally starred in her own film, the horror comedy Jennifer’s Body.  And it flopped.

Badly.

It made $6.87 million this past weekend, worse than Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs ($30 million), The Informant ($10 million) and even the obviously-gonna-tank Love Happens ($8 million).

There are plenty of theories about why exactly this happened: it’s basically a story about female frenemies, which doesn’t appeal to guys, but it has Megan Fox in it, who might not appeal to girls.  It’s a high school story, and yet it’s rated R.  Sometimes horror and comedy don’t go well together.  And unlike all those popular horror movies about a female character being victimized by a male character, Jennifer’s Body has it the other way around, which may have put off some male audiences.

But the bottom line is that Megan Fox can’t open a film.

Movie stars open movies to big numbers even when they have more things going against them than what I just listed.  The Will Smith movie Seven Pounds still managed to make $70 million despite awful reviews and a marketing campaign that didn’t remotely explain even in basic terms what the movie was about.

But Will Smith’s a star.  He makes a superhero movie (Hancock), and it makes $215 million with bad reviews while playing in theaters next to The Dark Knight.  That’s star power.

How about a female star? Sandra Bullock’s All About Steve opened a few weeks ago to hands down the worst reviews of the year, and it still made over $14 million — double Jennifer’s Body.

I’m not saying Fox doesn’t have a career ahead of her.  George Clooney has an atrocious track record opening films on his own.  Take away the Ocean’s movies, and you have movies like Leatherheads (opened to only $12.6 million) and Michael Clayton (nominated for Best Picture and still failed to break even a $50 million total gross, for heaven’s sake).  But the Next Big Thing?  For now she’ll remain an Internet fascination.