Wikipedia says Freddy Got Fingered turned a profit from DVD sales, so by the measures previously used in this thread, it was greenlit by a genius.
I’ll tell you a greenlighting that was puzzling at the time, and is still puzzling: The Lone Ranger (2013), with Johnny Depp playing Tonto. Presumably this was just an opportunity for Depp to do a bunch of riffing in his Depp-like way, but there is nothing about that particular IP that suggests that it could ever be successful.
I saw that, and to be honest, the best thing about it was the use of the William Tell Overture.
Its a movie you can only see for the first time once.
No, either “Johnny B Goode” was imported via a white teenager into that timeline from the original universe, or else nobody wrote it.
Not necessarily.
The best thing about that movie was that it completely erased 1981’s The Legend of the Lone Ranger from our memories.
Legend was most notable for the studio taking out an injunction against Clayton Moore (TV’s Lone Ranger) from appearing in the character he had inhabited for four decades. It also starred an unknown actor named Klinton Spilsbury, who was chosen over Bruce Boxleitner, Stephen Collins, Nicholas Guest, and Kurt Russell. Before the movie, Spilsbury had used the name Max Keller and had two bit parts. During production hie read his lines so badly they redubbed ALL his lines using another actor. After the movie, he returned to modeling.
It’s interesting that the movie starred a complete unknown, but featured such known quantities as Christopher Lloyd, Jason Robards, and Richard Farnsworth.
The director, William A. Fraker, hadn’t directed in eight years. After the movie, he wouldn’t direct anything for another seven. He was better known, and far better regarded, as a cinematographer.
Producer Sir Lew Garde later said he felt the big problem was that the script spent the first hour and ten minutes focusing on the backstory before John Reed finally put on the mask and became the Lone Ranger.
The film cost $18 million and made $12.6 million at the box office. On top of everything else it wound up against Raiders of the Lost Ark in theaters.
Well. That is a thoughtful and well thought out explanation.