'Zyzzyxx' earns lowest all-time box office
Domestic cume for 'Road' is $30 'Road' to B.O. ignominy
By DADE HAYES
'Zyzzyxx Road'

In Hollywood's rebound year at the B.O., some films certainly fell a little short. But even the year's biggest bombs surpassed the curiously titled "Zyzzyxx Road," whose domestic cume reached just $30. That's no typo. It's the lowest tally for any pic since modern record-keeping began in the 1980s.

The vigilante thriller starring Tom Sizemore, Katherine Heigl and Leo Grillo bore the ominous tagline "Dead Ahead." Like many on the dishonor roll of 60-plus titles cuming less than $1,000 over the past two decades, its stint in a single theater had more to do with contracts or four-wall rentals than mass audience desertion. Unheralded, it opened to $20 in February in Dallas, tacking on an additional 10-spot (repeat biz?) before slinking off to the video shelf.

Lest anyone assume the B.O. basement is reserved for unrated indie fare bound for pay-per-view, it's worth noting a PG-13 Warner Bros. release ranks as the fifth-lowest grosser. "Trojan War," a teen comedy starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Will Friedel (with bonus turns by Lee Majors and Anthony Michael Hall), collected $309 in its entire 1997 run. The director? George Huang, best known for "Swimming With Sharks."

Worst title ever.

99% of theaters wouldn't have six Zs and four Xs to put the title up on both sides of their "Now Showing" signs.

I guess if this is just a business deal to fulfill a contract, the producers said, "fuck this, we'll use a stupid title", but this still seems a bit perverse.

It would be interesting to know what films opening in 500+ theaters, 1000+ theaters...etc, had the lowest B.O. ever for that particular # of screens.

No shit? I saw this a few times in college and thought it was just awful enough to bear repeating. Guilty pleasure, I guess. But I liked me the Hewitt twins and the older brother from Boy Meets World. AMH was great

This is for opening weekend only, but I remember reading about this one when it came out:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363282/trivia

Total BO: $14,018,364

"Give me one ticket for Zizzer...er...Zit...umm...Zanzibar...eh...Xzibit...uh...Ice Age 2."

This actually opened in the theater at the shopping center where I work. I had to look it up and noticed it was only there VERY briefly.

Isn't that the road you pass on the way to Vegas? Well at least for us California folk anyway...

Now here's a movie where people can officially quote "for the five people who've seen it..."

Interesting news, even most direct-to-DVD movies make more than that in a day.

That's the one. I remember seeing this movie title a month or so back and figured that someone wrote a movie around that rather unique street name.

Great box office results! I could do better making a movie myself, renting a theater, and asking friends and family to show up!

That's Zzyzx Road, but from the film's description it sounds like what they were
going for.

This was released in theaters?

Why?

This movie, at best, screamed "direct to cable".

Bogus "failure". So the studio dumps it in a single theater, with a ridiculous title, and with ZERO advance promotion and it sells 3 or 4 tickets. No surprise. I'm sure the feat can be "topped" with a little effort by anyone. It probably didn't even have a poster out front.

And did they really not track box office sales before 1980?!

And can we get a link to the original article? Google has nothing that I can find.

Does the article say that box office sales weren't tracked before 1980? No, it says modern box office record keeping began in the 80's. It was probably done differently before that and maybe it didn't necessarily involve knowing the "per screen average".

I agree 100%.
There are a few articles about it at CHUD.com
Here ya go...
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=8378
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=8401
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=8420
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=8442

NY TIMES - Jan 05

"Zyzzyx Rd." has earned a place in the record book, Variety reported yesterday, for "the lowest tally for any pic since modern record-keeping began in the 1980s." While films like "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "Cars" and "X-Men: The Last Stand" were pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars last year, "Zyzzyx Rd." (pronounced ZY-zix) amassed a total of $30. The film, starring Tom Sizemore, Katherine Heigl and Leo Grillo, opened its six-day run in February in Dallas, making $20 in its debut showing, followed by an additional $10. The plot of the 90-minute thriller, written and directed by John Penney, involves a philandering accountant (Mr. Grillo) who goes to Las Vegas on a business trip. There he encounters the seductive Marissa (Ms. Heigl) and her jealous ex-boyfriend, Joey (Mr. Sizemore), whom they kill and bury in the Mojave Desert, the site of Zzyzx Road in Zzyzx, Calif. A summary written by the producer (Mr. Penney again) says, "In the 'Death of a Salesman' meets 'Lolita' ending, 'Zyzzyx Rd.' reveals a shocking, tragic twist."

What was the budget on this masterpiece?

From the sounds of it, $15.

Interestingly enough aren't they going to start a new show about Tom Sizemore on VH1 about his drug addiction? Would be a bit funny if the failure of this movie lead to his drug addiction....thus leaving us with this fabulous plot for a new reality tv show.

When theater employees go to a movie for free, does that show up as money in the BO?

No.

$2,000,000 according to IMDb.

At least they didn't waste any money on advertising. Anyway, when was the last time a 2 million dollar Tom Sizemore movie got wide release and acclaim?

The movie that comes to mind is Ruby. I barely heard anything about it, saw it came out, and it may have been out of the theatre by Monday.

BOM says it made $614,000 opening weekend on 764 screens, IMDB says it grossed a total of $900,000. This was near the peak of JFK conspiracy-theory mania as well.

Not the lowest, but the one that comes to mind. I mean, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 outgrossed this movie by $8 million.

"Ruby" came out a few months after "JFK" and only played in the crappy theaters around here. I just bought the DVD for 3 bucks though so we'll see if it's any good.

During the 10 years I spent working at various movie theaters, the movie that I remember doing the least business was the 1996 "Flipper" movie with Elijah Wood and Paul Hogan. At least TWO days in a row, it did not sell a single ticket. "The Perez Family" also did rather poorly, with zero patrons showing up for a Saturday matinee showing, and "Pootie Tang" is the only time I saw a Saturday evening show play to an empty house.