I was enormously surprised, yet pleased in a schadenfreude sort of way, that Stealth didn’t do better than it did. I figured the mainstream would gobble up a “pretty people in a retarded 'splosion flick from the director of XXX and Fast and the Furious” type of movie. I’m still a bit mystified as to why it wasn’t a blockbuster.
Neither Tron, nor The Black Hole, nor Bladerunner did particularly well at theaters here in the US. Bladerunner went on to become monster on VHS and DVD, of course, and is far and away the best of the three; but I honestly thought the other two were OK at least.
No question. That’s why it got such bad press: May used the money to make things look more real, which was just wrong. Super-budgets are supposed to be spent on special effects, not locations. The money is supposed to up there on the screen.
So, yeah, **Ishtar **is on my list. While not a great movie, it’s certainly a *good *movie, and among my favorite political-slash-showbiz comedies.
And I’ll join the Last Action Hero crowd. A brilliant, flawless, pantspeeing parody of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. (“What’s my name? Braunschweiger?”) Too bad it was marketed as a straightforward Schwarzenegger action flick, instead of the Airplane-style comedy it is.
As previously stated, Zoolander, Mystery Men & Hudsucker Proxy are three classic comedies that should have done better. I’ll add The Man Who Wasn’t There, which made less than 10 million I believe.
I don’t think Wallace & Grommit can by any means be called a bomb- over 50 million US box office, only cost 30 million- pretty good for a foreign animated comedy with characters unfamiliar to to the average American. It’s not like Wallace & Grommit are on US TV or anything. I don’t know any children who had ever heard of them before the film, only “in the know” adults. Add to that the British accents and sense of humour- I think it was more successful than probably anyone thought it would be.
I think Mystery Men is utter crap with barely a funny line. Delighted it bombed.
I thought the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would have done well (even though it is utter tosh).
Wallace and Gromit did $187 million at the box office, so I’m not sure what kind of failure that is. Probably similiar to King Kong’s “failure” of $545 million.
To be honest I’m surprised Serenity did as poorly as it did. Everyone I knew who saw it liked it, and none of them had heard of Firefly. Pretty much all the reviews were very open about it being better than Revenge of the Sith, but it barely broke even. I thought word of mouth would have been pretty good for it – it played at my local independant movie theatre for about 5 months!
I never understood why that movie was panned and hated. I found it funny and original.
Willow was a box office bomb? I thought it did all right. Anyway, as a young fantasy nerd I loved it, and I still don’t mind the occasional reviewing.
It will be, mark my words.
I saw all three films in the theatres (don’t know if they’re all on DVD yet). Liked all three.
Arnie had some great lines: when he played chicken with the other guy’s car, he did he would win because his car “had airbags.” Also, didn’t that flying axe scene remind you of something you would see from the Matrix? Ahead of its time, man.
Wallace and Gromit did very well for a film that doesn’t compromise when it comes to British humor.
My brother and I are huge Star Wars fans, but we still think Serenity had more … attitude (?) … than Episode III and therefore was more enjoyable.
What does that have to do with anything? Are you saying that PPG’s marketing was too girl-oriented? Animation fans usually aren’t too shy about indulging in their poison, or else what would be the point oflicensed merchandise such as t-shirts and bumper stickers? The midnight showing of Spongebob that I went to had enough patrons to justify the screening (all adults, of course).
The PPG debacle is a baffler. I think the problem is that most fans were disappointed that the movie was an orgin story. We already knew the origin - they tell us before every episode in fifteen seconds. They also already made an episode about Mojo’s origin. It made it seem like they were out of ideas. Movies made from series are supposed to put the characters into NEW stories too large to be told in just one episode, not tell us what we already know. Then, after the movie, the look of the series changed dramatically to match it. Maybe that gave the series a “jumped the shark” feel that told everyone it was over. That, or maybe they did run out of ideas - it did seem to get too self-referential in the later eps.
I feel the same way about The Island, which was a crap movie (that I only saw because I had free preview tickets and I like both McGregor and Johansson) but seemed perfectly attuned to mass-audience smash-em-up tastes.
Instead, it flopped badly enough to be an object lesson in Slate’s explanation of why originality is poison in Hollywood. (For certain loose values of “originality.”)
Agreed… I felt the same way about The Island. “This move looks terrible! Why aren’t people seeing it?”
Alot of people are listing movies that no one would consider BOMBS. They just weren’t big hits.
And I think the reason Power Puff Girls failed was because they failed to actually make use of it being a MOVIE. I know a lot of Power Puff fans that once they heard it was essentially an over long episode that didn’t really change anything or add anything to mythos. Having never seen it and not really being a fan of the cartoon I can’t vouch for that claim but it was related to me by three different PPG fans.
Wasn’t the movie not even done in widescreen?
Do you mean this Quick Change?
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou . On the heels of Lost in Translation , I thought it would do a whole lot better box office.
I just wanted to second this. Besides the great cast, it’s got early appearances by Tony Shaloub and Phil Hartman and is quotable.
I think King King taught us that when your source material is a classic film that is 100 minutes long, and your remaked is 187 minutes long, the audience can do enough math to figure out that your remake contains at least 87 minutes of potentially unnecessary filler.
I think King Kong taught us that no matter how much money your movie makes, if people want to say it’s a flop they won’t let numbers stand in the way :rolleyes:.
And it went up against Jurassic Park.
I nominate Lethal Weapon 4. It grossed less than its budget and I was wary to see anything PART IV. But it was my first exposure to Jet Li!
Four of us did 
.
I’ll second Life Aquatic. Still one of my all-time favorite movies, and we watch it every couple of months.
E.
I agree. King Kong is the 35th most successful in terms of raw gross. $535 million. But apparenttly a flop.
http://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/
That’s my bad, Blue Slipper (and others). For my post, I checked the box office on Hulk, but not the box office on King Kong.
I stand corrected – King Kong was a box office success. I still think it didn’t do nearly as well financially as it could have, and the bad word-of-mouth regarding its extraordinarily long runtime was at least partially to blame.