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Animated 'Delgo' Has Worst Wide Release Opening Ever


Don't feel too left out if you missed seeing the animated adventure movie "Delgo" this past weekend. No one did. In fact, the movie broke a record for having the worst opening ever for a film in wide release. "Delgo" earned a measly $511,920 this weekend on 2,160 screens, not even breaking the top ten. That's an average of $237 per screen for the three days. If you figure there were five screenings a day, and assume ticket prices are about $8, that comes out to two people in the theater per showing. By comparison, the Golden Globe-nominated drama "Doubt" earned roughly the same amount of money, but it was only in 15 theaters.

This is all too bad because the story of the making of "Delgo" has the makings of a great Hollywood underdog story. 36-year-old entrepreneur Marc Adler decided he wanted to direct and produce a $40 million computer animated kids' flick completely independent of Tinseltown behemoths like Disney and Dreamworks.

Starting in 2001, Adler and his small Atlanta-based animation company Fathom Studios toiled for years on a tight budget. They lined up an impressive, if eclectic, cast of voice actors including Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Kelly Ripa, and Anne Bancroft in her final role (she died in 2005). And when Adler couldn't get a Hollywood studio interested in his movie, he raised eyebrows by releasing it himself through distributor-for-hire Freestyle Releasing. It was a huge risk; one that ultimately didn't pay off. There wasn't the sort of marketing budget needed to make a film stand out in the already crowded holiday movie season.

Another problem was the quality of the movie. Or lack thereof. The story -- star-crossed lovers squaring off against an evil queen on a fanciful world divided between a reptilian people who can move rocks with their minds and a sprite-like folk who like dragons -- borrows liberally from "Star Wars," "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Dark Crystal," just without the charm and intelligence. The script required the efforts of six, count 'em, six screenwriters, including Adler. The critics trashed it, giving it a dreadful D average on Yahoo!, which proved to be lethal.

"Delgo" is not the only major wide release bomb of the year. Three of the ten worst openings for films in over 2000 locations came out this year. The raunchy teen sex comedy "College" and the thriller "Deception," starring Hugh Jackson and Ewan MacGregor, both tanked, garnering the sixth and ninth worst openings ever respectively. In both of those cases, the studios dumped the movies with little fanfare rather than spend millions on marketing a stinker. Here is Box Office Mojo's list of the ten biggest wide release bombs:

Rank Title Opening Theaters Per Screen Average Release Date
1 Delgo $511,920 2,160 $237 12/12/08
2 P2 $2,083,398 2,131 $977 11/9/07
3 Major League: Back to the Minors $2,087,011 2,322 $899 4/17/98
4 The Real Cancun $2,108,796 2,261 $932 4/25/03
5 College $2,153,109 2,123 $1,014 8/29/08
6 The Adventures of Pluto Nash $2,182,900 2,320 $940 8/16/02
7 All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 $2,256,118 2,037 $1,107 3/29/96
8 Deception $2,312,146 2,001 $1,155 4/25/08
9 I Dreamed of Africa $2,411,445 2,112 $1,141 5/5/00
10 Teacher's Pet $2,461,252 2,027 $1,214 1/16/04

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/delg...ning-ever.html

-This is the first time I've heard of this movie. Guess it wasnt marketed very well.

I thought Mallrats had the worst opening ever?

RichC2

Mallrats opened very poorly but it is outside of that top 10 (around $1,300 per screen).

Rypro 525

Also it only opened on 835 screens according to boxofficemojo, while that list is for over 2000 screens

Abob Teff

I thought that said "Diego" (as in Dora the Explorer) and hoped that it was an end to that crap.

Wow, I never would have guessed that Major League 3 would have been that high ...

tanman

Why would you care? Isn't that a kids show?

I did see the trailer for this and it did look horrible. Like a bad video game cut scene. Now I know why. While I like the underdog story a bad movie is still a bad movie.

What's the story of the movie with the lowest opening ever? Didn't it release on one screen and only two people went to see it?

DRG

That list appears to define wide as 2000+ screens; Mallrats opened with $1,153,838 on 852 screens, which is still twice what Delgo made on over twice as many screens.

For the record, here is the list of worst openings ever on 600+ theaters (which used to be the definition of a wide release):
http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/wee...WRSTOPN&p=.htm

Mallrats' opening, while poor, isn't even low enough to make the bottom 50 on that list. And Delgo still manages to make #13 on THAT list, despite being on a whopping 2160 screens. For comparison, the next widest release on that list is Million Dollar Mystery with 1396 screens.

Interestingly, #3 on the list is Nobel Son, which came out last week.

RyoHazuki

I don't know how the hell Delgo got all those screens after being in production hell for about 5 years and providing almost no advertising.

NoirFan

Wasn't there some Tom Sizemore movie a couple of years ago that grossed under $100.00?

E. Honda

Anyone with a computer nowadays can make a 3-D animated movie. Everyone thinks they can be Pixar, but nobody has ever come close. Want proof? Witness all that is "The Little Panda Fighter" I won't embed it here to preserve board sanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeNOupmGN5g

RyoHazuki

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0429277/

Zyzzyx Rd.

DeanoBKN

So it broke the record that P2 had only a year earlier? I didn't even know P2 was in 1st before that listing.

tanman

Ah..yes that's it.

# Only opened in one theater (Highland Village Park Theater in Dallas, Texas) ran for six days, and amassed a final total of $20 (originally tallied as $30, but $10 was refunded to a member of the film's crew who paid to see the movie) in box office takings.

# The film's very limited release was a technical necessity to comply with Screen Actors Guild's regulations.

# Lowest-grossing movie of all time (as of 2007).

TomOpus

I saw one.... count 'em... one ad for this movie. It looked like one of those Saturday-morning cheapo cartoons. I can't believe it cost $40 million.

MBoyd

Now what would have been really funny and embarrassing for Punisher War Zone is if it had made more than PWZ yet still became the widest worst opening ever. PWZ came in at #14, 2500 screens and $552 PSA.

Jaymole

I am shocked, SHOCKED, that Freddie Prinze Jr, Louis Gosset or Val Kilmer would ever appear in a bad film.

dx23

Exactly. People also have to check Ratatouing to see the atrocities that can be done using cheap 3-d animation technology and stealing from other peoples films.

toddly6666

I could have sworn that The Real Cancun did well opening week? I certainly saw it on opening night...

Mikael79

This thread made me look up Waterworld, and I was shocked to see that they actually made money, even though the press always seemed to rip on them:

Budget
$175,000,000 (estimated)

Gross
$255,200,000 (Worldwide)

Rentals
$42,358,000 (USA)

Venusian

I saw the movie last Friday. The theater had "a lot" of people in it...maybe 50-100 (I'm terrible at estimating numbers). But almost all were people from Fathom. I went because my bro-in-law worked at Fathom and was credit in the short and the movie. I didn't think the movie was that bad. Not great, but I've seen worse. The lack of advertising definitely hurt.

majorjoe23

The Real Cancun was just ahead of its time. It could have been a highly rated cable reality show instead of a crappy movie.

chris_sc77

I hope a similar fate happens to this week's "The Tale of Despereaux"

My Other Self

I remember I had just graduated high school when The Real Cancun came to DVD. I was expecting nothing but boob shots and hardcore sex and got none of that.

NoirFan

Jesus, with a title like that it was doomed from the beginning.

HistoryProf

what is P2?

devilshalo

I thought it was opening next weekend.