Fox Searchlight Already Folding 'Gentlemen Broncos'?

Updated on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 3:03PM by Get The Big Picture

I don't want to speak too soon, but what the hell has happened to Fox Searchlight this year? It started out well enough, with Notorious becoming a surprise hit. There was also (500) Days of Summer, which will likely emerge as the studio's big awards charge at the end of the year. And we don't know what will happen with Fantastic Mr. Fox quite yet.

But check out the rest of the line-up: Miss March, bomb. Post Grad, bomb. Adam, $2 million in almost four months. Whip It, troubling returns that should have been much greater. Amelia, won't make money and it won't get any nominations, which is the reason it was made. But Gentlemen Broncos, featuring Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords and directed by Napoleon Dynamite's Jared Hess, might be the biggest loser of them all. And Searchlight knows it. The movie only made $11,000 this past weekend in two theaters, and received very bad reviews overall. As a consequence, I received the following note from the studio: "Fox Searchlight’s Gentlemen Broncos will not be opening in your market. There is no longer an opening date for this film."

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Uh...What? The New Trailer for 'Gentlemen Broncos'

Odd for the sake of being odd or odd and that's cool? It seems to be one or the other for writer-director Jared Hess. I'm still not entirely sure which category Napoleon Dynamite falls in but Nacho Libre was definitely just trying to be left-of-center. Did it work? Not really.

There's no mistaking that from this trailer, his third film, Gentlemen Broncos, is playing the weird card early and often. That doesn't mean it can't coalesce into something very hip, just that I can certainly identify that what I'm looking at is not the sort of thing you see everyday. Actually, the first minute of the trailer doesn't seem terribly aberrant. And then Sam Rockwell shows up. Wow. Very peculiar. In addition to Rockwell, Broncos features a lot of Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords, so that's cool. He seems to fit right in with the curious surroundings:

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