Tuesday
Dec162008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 10:41AM Worst Debut Ever: 'Delgo' Sets Standard for Futility
I love history and record breakers as much as the next
guy. But this is one record that went right by me. I simply had no idea we had
reached a new all-time low.
2 - P2 - $2,083,398 opening ($977 per screen)
3 - Major League: Back to the Minors - $2,087,011 opening ($899 per screen)
4 - The Real Cancun - $2,108,796 opening ($932 per screen)
5 - College - $2,153,109 opening ($1,014 per screen)
6 - The Adventures of Pluto Nash - $2,182,900 opening ($940 per screen)
7 - All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 - $2,256,118 opening ($1,107 per screen)
8 - Deception - $2,312,146 opening ($1,155 per screen)
9 - I Dreamed of Africa - $2,411,445 opening ($1,141 per screen)
10 - Teacher's Pet - $2,461,252 opening ($1,214 per screen)
Let's break it down a little further: If there were five showings a day at $8 per ticket, each time a theater ran Delgo, an angel gets its wings. What? Oh, sorry. Damn holiday programming...OK, so five showings, eight bucks a seat, that comes out to a whopping two people in every theater, every time the film showed. You simply can't do much worse than that.
What is Delgo? It's a completely independent movie financed by a guy named Marc Adler. He directed, produced, and co-wrote the film, which features the voice talents of Freddie Prinze the second, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Chris Kattan. Yeah, that's not going to move a lot of product. And to give you an idea of how long this film's been in production, it's also the last screen credit for Anne Bancroft, who died over three years ago.
So why didn't anybody see it? Well, don't ask me; it wasn't screened for a lot of press members. Instead, I'll let the always acerbic and hyper-critical Yahoo! explain it:
"Another problem was the quality of the movie. Or lack thereof. The story -- star-crossed lovers squaring off against an evil queen on a fanciful world divided between a reptilian people who can move rocks with their minds and a sprite-like folk who like dragons -- borrows liberally from Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and The Dark Crystal, just without the charm and intelligence."
Yowza. It turns out that 2008 was a terrible year in the widest release/least return game, with one-third of the top ten bombs coming this year. Here's the list:
1 - Delgo - $511,920 opening ($237 per screen)
2 - P2 - $2,083,398 opening ($977 per screen)
3 - Major League: Back to the Minors - $2,087,011 opening ($899 per screen)
4 - The Real Cancun - $2,108,796 opening ($932 per screen)
5 - College - $2,153,109 opening ($1,014 per screen)
6 - The Adventures of Pluto Nash - $2,182,900 opening ($940 per screen)
7 - All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 - $2,256,118 opening ($1,107 per screen)
8 - Deception - $2,312,146 opening ($1,155 per screen)
9 - I Dreamed of Africa - $2,411,445 opening ($1,141 per screen)
10 - Teacher's Pet - $2,461,252 opening ($1,214 per screen)
Really, the news is even worse for studios, since P2 came out 13 months ago. So that's four of the ten worst openings ever since November 2007.
Reader Comments (8)
The studio is called Fathom, as in how we measure the depth of water, or in this case how deep a company can run itself into debt.
I'm sure it's happened before, though not often, but this movie runs the risk of being in debt more than its original budget, when you factor in what little marketing it did, the cost of prints and theater rentals, etc. It could be a $40 million movie that ends up owing $45 or $50 million.
I think we deserve a Big Picture review of this movie, Colin...is it playing in the Valley?
Don't forget "The Rocker"- worst opening weekend for a movie in over 2500 theaters! And something called "Proud American" had the worst opening wide release weekend ever, with an astounding $96,076 total after playing in 750 theaters.
That's not a wide release. 750 is limited. But you're right; The Rocker should be on that Yahoo! list of worst openings ever, at $947 per screen. So that's even worse news for 2008. Four of the top six in the last 13 months.
how does a movie like this get released in over 2,000 theaters and a movie like Reservation Road get released in only a handful? Some things just don't make sense.
That's by design. Delgo can't make money a month from now, and they knew that going in. So they tried to expose as many people to it as they could all at once. It could've worked with a better product.
With Reservation Road and any of the other Oscar movies, they're counting on bigger business in the first quarter, when all the buzz is peaking. Although...that's probably not going to be the case for Reservation road, which seems like a longshot to garner a ton of Oscar consideration.
Yeah, I just remember an article you wrote about that movie, stating how confusing it was that the studio just gave up on that movie. I was one of the few to actually see the movie as it was only in theaters for a couple weeks and grossed less than a professional ping pong player's salary. I actualy thought it was a good movie, plus it had some heavy hitters...shame really.