Yes and no… I expect everyone involved in making ***The Wild, Wild West *** knew it wasn’t very good, but it was being released at the start of the summer and had a popular star… so the reasoning was, “Give it a big release and a lot of promotion, and we may get a few big opening weekends out of it before word of mouth kills it off.”
There are a lot of movies like that- movies that, if marketed well and released at the right time COULD rake in 50 or even 100 million before circling the drain. Even if that isn’t enough to make the movie profitable, it could avert disaster, turning an utter bomb into a mere disappointment. And that’s important- a disappointment can be overcome, but a bomb can kill careers. Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld got to make more movies, after all.
True enough, and we know this happens all the time – any time you see a note in the Movies section of your Friday paper which says, “this film was not available for previews”, you know that that’s exactly what’s happening.
But, in these cases, as you say, the crew knows that it’s a stinker; at that point, it’s a matter of seeing how much money they can milk out of it. What the OP was asking about would be a very different situation, in which the crew thinks that they have a winner on their hands, and are surprised by the bad reaction at the premiere.
I saw The Lost World from Spielberg at a preview. I was pumped and expected to love it.
You could feel the vibe in the audience as the movie continued. It sucked, we all knew it sucked, and everyone from any studio must have sensed we knew it. Mild heckling and open, loud laughing began. It was awkward and hilarious.
However, not a premiere. That would be much worse.
You could actually tell Kevin Kline knew the movie wasn’t very good while he was filming his scenes. I love Kline, think he’s a fantastic actor, but that was one of the most phoned-in performances of all time. I can’t decide whether this or Ed Norton in The Italian Job was the most obvious “I showed up and learned my lines, give me my check now” acting job I’ve seen from a good actor.
Uncle Jocko: one of the reasons I adore “Murder by Death” was that the actors were all obviously having the time of their lives during filming! You can just see them radiating laughter and glee.