What’s weird is** Ben-Hur**'s CinemaScoreis A-. So the (very) few audience members who did see it, tended to actually like it, that just didn’t translate into *more *people going.
In the new movie,
Messala loses a leg from the race, but survives. He & Ben-Hur forgive each other and *literally *ride off into the sunset together, I am not even joking.
True, Nina Simone was not just black she was black and the people complaining loudest were people annoyed at the notion that the filmmakers really can’t find any black actresses that might do? You need a light skinned actress you have to put dark makeup “blackface” on? Really? Is casting that hard?
India Arie: Why Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone Is “Tone-Deaf” Casting
Both the 2016 and 1959 versions suck compared with 1925 because nobody was killed making them. 
Late to the part on this one … but besides the two Peremensoe named:
Gary Busey in The Buddy Holly Story
Lou Diamond Phillips in La Bamba
Heck, one could make an argument for Ben Kingsley breaking for American audiences for the first time in Gandhi.
How precious! :o
Please tell me that they are in a Cadillac convertible when that happens.
I thought the gross column was North American. Ben-Hur sits at under $20M domestic and won’t make too much more. The Alamo is a bit of $22 domestic and Mars Need Moms is just under that. So, yeah, anyway, it will probably rank behind those under either criteria.
Kingsley’s an interesting choice as an example in this context - his casting is sometimes held up as objectionable, because he’s English (albeit of half-Indian descent); some wonder why no Indian actor was chosen; his use of heavy make-up (it allegedly took 8 hours to get him to look like Gandhi) is sometimes called “brownface”:
But not everyone objected - Nehru thought Gandhi himself would have been amused by the choice:
I rather favour Nehru’s position: what matters to me most is that the actors are “very good”. However, their race or other aspects of their identity can be important if it somehow adds to the movie-going experience in some way, either because it’s inadvertent ironic (“Besides, the idea of being portrayed by an Englishman would have made Bapu laugh a great deal”), or because the movie-maker is making some sort of deliberate point.
Whether actors of certain backgrounds are being improperly denied roles strikes me as something of concern more for actor’s guilds and the like.
I’d just like to comment that I really liked The Alamo. The new one, not the John Wayne epic. Didn’t see it in the theater but have the DVD. It’s pretty historically accurate for a “big” film. But I can understand that the public prefers something simpler…
Heh. So you thought PLUTO NASH grossed $7.1m domestic, and the sobering truth is that it only managed that worldwide on a $100m budget?
Yeah, as awful as THE ALAMO and MARS NEEDS MOMS – and PLUTO NASH – did domestically, they all made even less overseas; BEN-HUR looks like it’ll do better here, plus it hasn’t yet begun to rake in Meh-I’ve-Seen-Worse numbers elsewhere, since it hasn’t yet opened in the UK or Spain or Germany or Russia or Japan. (But it has already grossed more foreign money than HOW DO YOU KNOW ever did, and it’s made more domestic money in its first ten days than HDYK did in its first ten days, and so it could still beat that one by either criterion too.)
I agree. I particularly liked how it concentrated more on how it felt to be in the Texians’ shoes, rather than making it relatively simplistic and 90% about the final assault. And they actually ended after San Jacinto, which was a sort of historical coda on the whole thing that explained WHY the Alamo was important in the context of the rest of the war.
Bumping because Box Office Mojo now has Ben Hur (a) domestically outgrossing what The Alamo did worldwide, as well as (b) outperforming a whole bunch of flops made on $100+M budgets.
Including one that should’ve been obvious to me: if someone had asked me why this remake of Ben Hur was a bad idea, I’d have probably said, well, the huge smash hit in the 1950s made a ton of money and won Best Picture, built as it was around a movie star like Charlton Heston earning a Best Actor win. And if someone had asked why Charlton Heston was such a lock for headlining a Biblical epic that was up for a ton of Oscars, I’d have probably said, well, The Ten Commandments was a huge smash hit, right? And if someone had asked why that Biblical epic didn’t win Best Picture, I’d have said it lost to Around The World In 80 Days.
So if someone had then asked, hey, what’s an even dumber idea than a Ben Hur remake, I guess I’d have said “well, an Around The World in 80 Days remake.”
And, sure enough: if Ben Hur is at $26M domestic and $54M foreign for $80M total, you can bet that the 80 Days remake – the one with Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan? With everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Owen and Luke Wilson? – topped out at $24M domestic and $48M foreign for a $72M total. And on a higher budget!
Ben Hur is a disappointment that never should’ve been made – sure. But it’s now outgrossed that K-19 flick Harrison Ford did, and that Land of the Lost flick Will Ferrell did, and that Windtalkers flick Nicolas Cage did, and Stealth and RIPD and so on, all made for $100M or more – and it’s fast closing in on Ali and Catwoman and Final Fantasy, likewise. Who knows where it’ll stop?