Summer is the season of box office hits, but here (with credit to The Hollywood Reporter for the numbers) is a look at 10 movies that didn't come close to qualifying for that title.
Mars Needs Moms
Wow. How could so few people turn out for a movie based on a book by Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed? Robert Zemeckis' movie isn't just the biggest bomb of this year, but after pulling in about $39 million worldwide and costing at least $150 million to make, it's easily one of the biggest box office disasters of all time, and thankfully will hopefully keep Zemeckis from laying his remake hands on the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."
Your Highness
I pretty thoroughly enjoy a well-made raunchy comedy ("Bad Teacher," still in theaters, is a good example), but "Your Highness" certainly wasn't one of them. The stoner comedy that cost about $50 million to produce created very little buzz at all, taking in only $21.6 million domestically and a mere $3 million overseas.
Arthur
Only you can stop the '80s remake machine, and moviegoers certainly did their part with this dud starring Russell Brand, who I usually like quite a bit. The "comedy" took in $33 domestically and another $12.7 million overseas, giving it at least a slightly larger haul than its production budget of about $40 million.
Prom
Was there really a Disney movie this year that only took in $10 million at the domestic box office? If you didn't know it was something called "Prom," you're clearly far from alone. In relative terms, I suppose it's hard to really call this one a "bomb," since it only cost $8 million to make, but I guess in this case you get what you pay for.
Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer
The folks behind this potential kids movie tentpole were clearly hoping Judy Moody would follow this one up with perhaps a Not Forlorn Fall and then maybe a Not Woeful Winter (as some kids must know, the actual titles of these are probably much more clever than mine), but with the $20 million movie only taking in $13.4 million so far, Judy's movie calendar may have already run out.
Green Lantern
Have we finally reached the breaking point with super hero overload? There will be another test coming July 22 when "Captain America: The First Avenger" hits theaters, but with "Green Lantern," all signs point to yes, with the movie costing at least $200 million to produce and expected to rake in no more than $260 million or so worldwide. Not a disaster, though, and in fact, there's already plans for a sequel, so what do I know?
Priest
Finally, a vampire movie that no one wanted to see. The action movie starring Paul Bettany as a holy man who hunts down bloodsuckers cost about $60 million to produce, and took in a mere $29.1 million domestically, but caught up a bit overseas by taking in another $46 million.
Sucker Punch
Along with being a box office bomb, Zack Snyder's truly bizarre fantasy-revenge mess holds the double distinction of being both one of the movies I was most looking forward to for this year and also the single worst one I've seen so far in 2011, by a pretty wide margin. The flick, which cost about $82 million, took in just $36.3 million domestic and $53.4 million overseas, and to add insult to injury, didn't even open at No. 1, losing out to "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules" (and having seen them both, I can confirm that the Wimpy Kid turned in a much better movie.)
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
The original "Hoodwinked!" was the very definition of a sleeper, taking in more than $100 million worldwide with little fanfare, but this sequel turned out to be pretty much the complete opposite, with a production budget of about $30 million and a domestic box office take of just $10 million or so, supplemented by a scant $3.6 million overseas.
The Beaver
No, this movie about a crazy Mel Gibson wasn't a documentary, and nor was it seen by just about anyone in the world. Costing $20 million to make, it made no box office impression at all, taking in less than $1 million domestic before disappearing. I'm no economics master, but I'm pretty sure that adds up to a disaster.
And I'll leave you with simply a brief preview of tonight's sure-to-be very funny episode of "Louie." Packaged with the extremely funny "Wilfred," FX has a great pair of comedies at a time when there is very little else on, so give them a chance if you haven't yet. Peace out.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Bombs Away: 10 2011 box office duds
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Of remakes stopped, crazy and just plain audacious
I didn't bother to see "Mars Needs Moms," not because the idea of martians kidnapping and killing little kids' moms offended me, but just because I found something better to do (spend the weekend with mi hermano for a couple of epicly good Baseball Project shows.)
It seems, however, that that simple act of ignoring may have been my little part (and probably yours, since I don't think anyone went to see that) in stopping something much more insidious.
Robert Zemeckis, a producer of "Mars Needs Moms," had been plotting a digital remake of "Yellow Submarine," I guess just because he has the technological skills to do such a thing and, well, maybe he's just bored. Well, luckily, it seems the complete failure of "Mars Needs Moms" has led Disney to put the kibosh on that before it really got off the ground. Bully to that.
Another remake that is almost finished has apparently had a late and rather funny change of villainy in hopes of expanding its box office take.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that MGM is changing the villains in "Red Dawn" from Chinese to North Korean in order to keep its access to the humongous Chinese box office. Take a second to let it sink in just how funny that is. The studio is apparently, though not terribly surprisingly, still looking for a distributor for the movie starring Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Per the L.A. Times, the changes will cost less than $1 million and will "involve changing an opening sequence summarizing the story's fictional backdrop, re-editing two scenes and using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean." Priceless. Actually, I think that might be enough to get me to at least watch this on DVD to see how many accidental Chinese symbols remain.
And in a final word about remakes before a couple of fun videos, it seems that Netflix is making a "bold" movie into "original" programming by paying $100 million or so for David Fincher and Kevin Spacey's remake of the sublime UK TV series "House of Cards." Quotations added by me and fully intended to be facetious.
To acquire the show, which I assume it will then lease to a TV network, Netflix has agreed upfront to a two season, 26 episode commitment, but I really can't see how in the world this is going to catch on.
If you've never seen the original, it stars the late and truly great Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart, aka F.U., an enterprising Conservative politician who rises through the British Parliament from chief whip all the way to prime minister through increasingly and comically evil means. I just don't see how Spacey or anyone else will be able to pull off his unique brand of malevolence as its translated across the pond.
But only a sucker would bet against Netflix, which now has a rather amazing 61 percent of the streaming content on the Internet (and I must say I've been thoroughly enjoying its all six seasons of "The Larry Sanders Show" - TV perfection.) Stay tuned to find out if this turns out as well as just about everything else Netflix has laid its hands on.
OK, after all that today, all I have is a couple of videos. First up comes the comedy duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost taking a break from the set of "Paul" to do a fairly funny "Star Wars" send-up for the folks at College Humor. All the early reviews I've seen so far "Paul" indicate that Greg Mottola's movie will deliver broad sci-fi laughs when it his theaters Friday, so I'm certainly in. Enjoy the video, then stick around for one more.
Finally today, courtesy of Yahoo, here are the first five minutes of "Source Code," director Duncan Jones' follow-up to his sci-fi gem "Moon," which is set to hit theaters April 1. I suppose if you don't know what exactly Jake Gyllenhaal's character is supposed to stop in this flick, the end of this clip is a bit of a spoiler, but since it happens in the first five minutes, I really don't think it can be much of one. I've decided I'll be going to see this flick, which also stars Michelle Monaghan. Enjoy the clip, and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.
