moviefan2k4

Here's a few to start with; feel free to post about others.

Hocus Pocus

This fright-themed comedy was made in 1993, but the idiots at Disney released it in mid-July, over three months before Halloween. As a result, it made under $40 million on a $28 million budget.

Star Trek: Nemesis

While their first mistake was hiring Stuart Baird to direct it, another classic blunder by Paramount was releasing this in December 2002. It went up directly against both "The Two Towers" and "Gangs of New York", barely a month after the second "Harry Potter" film came out. The dismal box-office ($7 million profit on $60 million budget) is what largely contributed to the franchise being placed on hold for several years, until the 2009 reboot.

Last Action Hero

This self-aware action comedy made decent money for the time, with a little over half its $85 million budget in profit...but was quickly squashed by "Jurassic Park". To his credit, Schwarzenegger tried getting his co-producers to stall the release one month, but they outvoted him.

story

"Weird Al" Yankovic speaks quite extensively on the DVD commentary track about what happened to UHF in the summer of 1989. Here's a bit from Wikipedia. Talk about bad timing!

[quote]According to Yankovic's Behind the Music episode, UHF enjoyed one of the most successful test screenings in Orion's history. Orion Pictures released UHF on July 21, 1989 as a hopeful summer blockbuster, hoping that Yankovic would pull them out of the water. However, critical response was negative, and it was out of the theaters by the end of the month. Yankovic has stated that it was not a "critic movie." As "Weird Al" states in his commentary of the movie, UHF was thought to be the movie that would "save the studio" for Orion. He was treated very well because of this. He states in the commentary: "Every morning I would wake up to fresh strawberries next to my bed. Then, when the movie bombed, I woke up and... no more strawberries!"

Within the month prior, and up to the release of UHF, bigger blockbuster movies like Ghostbusters 2, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, Batman, Licence to Kill, When Harry Met Sally, and Weekend at Bernie's were also released by studios. The draw to these blockbuster movies is also attributable to the lower attendance at UHF's premiere./[quote]

Why So Blu?

Well, Nemesis is a horrible film on its own. Word of mouth messed it all up.

Crocker Jarmen

I remember going to see Grindhouse on the opening weekend and shocked that such a heavily advertised movie, half directed by Quentin Tarantino, only pulled in a dozen people for the 8 o'clock show. It was Easter weekend, perhaps not the best time to release a movie that was mostly going to pull a teenage/college crowd, who I guess were all traveling home for the holiday.

moviefan2k4

I like most of it, but so many character scenes were cut out. Levar Burton said this was largely Baird's decision, which is why the quality suffered.

The best deleted scene relates directly to the end of the film, and the Paramount execs were foolish to tolerate its removal...

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jacob_b

People weren't ready for a 3 hour film like they are today in which all blockbusters, with credits, are nearing the 3 hour mark.

For those that say Hocus Pocus was a bust, it made more than their budget, how is that bombing?

Ash Ketchum

Walter Hill's TRESPASS (1992), starring Bill Paxton, Bill Sadler, Ice T and Ice Cube, was originally supposed to be released as THE LOOTERS in July of that year, but was delayed because of the L.A./Rodney King riots and released at Christmas time as TRESPASS. Wrong season for a gritty, down-and-dirty, racially explosive crime thriller. I still say it should have been released in July under its original title. I think it would have been absolutely appropriate on the heels of the riots.

stingermck

Punisher (2004) Great movie, but released the same weekend as Kill Bill Vol 2. Two revenge movies in 1 weekend, I don't get it.

majorjoe23

I absolutely agree on Nemesis. In Dec. 2001 some exec should have seen the numbers on The first Harry Potter and Rings films and made the call the move Star Trek.

james2025a

Well the length of movie run time has steadily increased over the past 30 years, thats true. Back in the 80s the average time of a movie was probably around 90 mins, now its easily 120 mins.

The problem with Grindhouse is that those movies were just terrible. The best things about them were the fake trailers. Everything else was horrid. Death Proof is easily one of the worst movies i have ever seen. The dialogue, acting, story....everything about that movie is annoying and crap. I wanted to see it because of Kurt Russell, but not even he could make it watchable. Tarantino is such a hack these days. He had two solid movies at the beginning of his career and since then it has been just continued rubbish, with occasional stand out singular performances or individual scenes.

Hokeyboy

People weren't "ready" for a 3 hour blockbuster in 2007?

What year did Titanic bank $1.8 billion again?

RocShemp

And what about those classic "roadshow" pictures that even had intermissions?

Rockmjd23

Nemesis was bad but it never had a chance.

RichC2

Nemesis was bad, the release date was not the problem.

I don't think Grindhouse showed much appeal outside of a small crowd and don't think a different release date would have helped much except maybe around Halloween (for some reason, Halloween and Grindhouse go well together). It was a very niche title.

moviefan2k4

A common adage in Hollywood is that if a film doesn't make at least its entire budget back in profit, it's considered a flop.

Well, the same thing happened with both "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" in 1998. The latter made more money in comparison to its budget, but the former was more popular with critics.

RichC2

Armageddon and Deep Impact were released 2 months apart, and both were more or less critically maligned - 47% for Deep Impact, 40% for Armageddon.

Punisher and Kill Bill were released on the same weekend which made no sense, I remember watching Jimmy Kimmel's show, he has Laura Harring and Quentin Tarantino on. They were "arguing" over which would do better.

robin2099

Red 2 would be a good example. The first one opened during a slower period and was a hit, but opening the sequel in summer caused it to be lost in the shuffle.

X-Files: I want to Believe had the misfortune to open a week after The Dark Knight. It also would of worked better as a fall release since the shows popularity was waning by that point.

Jay G.

The rule of thumb is that a film has to have a domestic gross twice its budget in order to have broken even. This is because the studio doesn't get the entire gross, the theaters get a cut as well. Also, there's advertising and marketing costs, the distribution costs, etc. which aren't typically included in the production budget reported for a film. Studios also get revenue from foreign distribution and home video, and possibly merchandising depend on the film, but the amount there is usually predicated on how well it did domestically.

So a $28 million film like Hocus Pocus would've had to have grossed about $56 million domestically just to break even. It didn't, so it bombed. To have been profitable, it would've had to have grossed more.

Note that the "double the budget" rule is just a guideline for us outsiders; it's typically impossible to say for sure whether a specific film was profitable or not unless you're the studio's accountant, and they don't typically talk.

mcnabb

I believe EDTV didn't fare well in the winter of 99 because it was released a few months after the Truman Show (Summer of 98), and I remember Ron Howard saying in an interview that fans thought it looked too much like The Truman Show.

I always thought Road to Perdition should have been released during Oscar Season instead of the summer, because it a more mature movie then the typical brainless summer movie. But I think the rationale was that it would seperate itself from all the mindless blockbusters, but I don't think it as well as projected?

DJariya

White House Down. Not a bad movie, but being released the same year and only a few months after Olympus has Fallen killed it.

Noonan

Gangster Squad. Delayed for months due to the Batman shooting and got very little press when it finally came out.

majorjoe23

Similarly, Hellboy 2 opening the week before The Dark Knight wasn't the best timing either. It did better than the first Hellboy (160 million vs. 99, counting international), but it also dropped 71% in its second week.

DaveyJoe

The X-Files is my favorite show but I didn't even catch that one in the theater because I was busy seeing the Dark Knight over and over.

islandclaws

While I wouldn't exactly call it a "bomb", opening Hellboy II the weekend before TDK was a terrible idea. TDK totally cannibalized the fanboy audience HII needed to thrive. It barely cracked a 2x multiplier when it should have gone over $100mm. In fact, I think it was the only film that summer (year?) to open over $30mm and NOT hit $100mm.

dugan

I thought the canonical example was Blade Runner opening at the same time as E.T. and getting thoroughly outcompeted?