In 1990, NBC aired a series based on the Ferris Bueller movie. Fox countered with, “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.” Talk was that “Parker Lewis” would tank in no time flat. Ferris went 13 episodes and vanished. Parker Lewis ran 3 seasons. In one of the PLCL episodes, the ending takes place in the auditorium and while the cast does their thing, two figures get up to leave and one says to the other, C’mon, Ferris, let’s get outta here. 
The makers of Australian film** Crocodile Dundee** (1986) always hoped it would be successful.
However it has been reported for years that Australian band INXS invested in the film because they expected it, like most films, would actually end up failing and that, supposedly, would have created tax benefits for the then successful band.
Crocodile Dundee went on to become a massive success.
TCMF-2L
The band Radiohead have supposedly always had mixed feelings about the song Creep which, in the end, was their first big hit.
Supposedly the crashing guitar noises before the chorus were put in by the Jonny Greenwood (guitarist) trying to deliberately ruin the song to make it unreleasable.
TCMF-2L
Cum On Feel the Noize by Quiet Riot:
And what about Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed? Did he want it to be a failure?
And somewhat related… The Residents didn’t want Not Available to be a failure. They simply didn’t want anyone to hear it (at least initially).
I find this hard to believe. I saw several productions of “Hair”, tried out for one of them and know someone (sort of, on the Internet) who was a cast member in the Great Lakes production. The concept of entire albums of music being thematic was new, but popular. This carried it a step further and was an entire musical. It was quickly followed by “Tommy” and “Jesus Christ - Superstar”, actual rock operas.
The songs are perfect for the times. Some are obviously pop gold when you first hear them like “Good Morning Starshine/Aquarius”. Others are similar and they all are spot-on topical. Shelly Plimpton’s “Frank Mills” is such a sweet little song, probably my favorite.
Hair resonated with a generation like nothing else I can think of.
Dennis
Off-Broadway and full of hippies was not a recipe for success back then. At the time it seemed like the only publicity it got was for the naked hippies. It wasn’t a deliberate failure but a tough sell for Broadway, which might’ve not happened were it not for Michael Butler going all counter-cultural and, I assume, wanting to piss off his dad.
Looks like you’re at least partially correct.
“Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” was written, years before it was recorded, by three bandmates (Gary DeCarlo, Paul Luka, and Dale Frashuer). That band broke up, and, when DeCarlo was recording songs as a solo artist, with Luka as producer, they needed a B-side song. They resurrected the song, recorded it themselves (repurposing drum tracks from other songs), and attributed it to “Steam,” which didn’t actually exist at that point.
Yeah, that may have been what the critics assumed, but 30 Rock’s creators didn’t intend for it to fail.
This is believable because there was a time when investing in Australian movies gave a tax deduction of (if I recall correctly) 150%.
There were lots of rubbish movies made that never made it to cinemas.
Why would it be more beneficial for them to have the movie fail?
Not more beneficial in this case, but more a case where it didn’t really matter one way or the other. I guess they thought it would fail but that wouldn’t matter because of the massive tax advantage. I’m sure they didn’t complain when it was a huge success.
When the story is told, and this might just be for comedic impact, the success of the film is usually presented as a negative. This is INXS bass player Garry Gary Beers relating the story
Quote
So… funny story. When we actually started to make some money after the Listen Like Thieves album and tour, we were told to “write off” some of it on a bad investment. One of our accountants recommended a movie with no chance of success called Crocodile Dundee. Mike and Andy flew up to the Northern Territory to meet Paul Hogan and the crew and came back saying that it would be a good Aussie film but that’s about it…
So needless to say it was the biggest thing since sliced bread and we made our “problem” bigger…
Great film…
G
I note he puts problem in ‘scare’ quotes.
TCMF-2L
Nobody predicted that Avenue Q would be as successful as it was. And tht yeatr everyone predicted the best musical Tony would go to Wicked. It seemed a sure thing.
Guess what happened?
Because if the movie had succeeded, the investors would have seen a profit - a taxable profit.
That’s true…but I don’t think it was actually put together to fail.
ABC didn’t have any faith in Grey’s Anatomy. It was premiered in the middle of a season as filler to plug a hole with little promotion. They seemed to be just throwing it against a wall to see if it stuck and it did and became a huge hit and franchise.
Again, not quite what I’m looking for here. I’m looking for media that was deliberately designed to fail, but succeeded anyway.
There is the phenomenon of a band being contractually obligated to release an album. They often won’t see much if any money from the album, especially if they’ve signed away songwriting credits.
So one option is to release something un-listenable. This is supposedly the reason for “Metal Machine Music”. Another option is to release an album full of covers.
Possibly. Most critics thought it fulfilled his contract with a giant “fuck you” to his record company. I was a big LR fan at the time, but even I didn’t buy it. Then again, I bought Berlin, listened to it once, and it has sat ten feet away from me for forty years, so I’m not sure how big a fan I really am.
And MMM wouldn’t count because it failed totally.