If a movie opens in theaters and no one goes to see it, is it really a movie?
That may be the question that everyone connected to “Delgo” is asking themselves this week. The movie was released into theaters last year to the worst box-office opening in history. “Delgo” earned a measly $511,920 this weekend on 2,160 screens, not even breaking the top ten. That’s an average of $237 per screen for the three days.
Doing some math and figuring a cost of eight dollars per ticket and assuming the film was running five times a day, that averages out to two people per theater. The movie earned less than “Doubt” did. “Doubt” broke the top ten and only played on fifteen screens across the country.
For those of you scratching your heads and wondering just what “Delgo” is, here’s a little more information. The movie is the creation of 36-year-old Marc Adler who decided to produce a $40 million computer-animated film to rival DreamWorks or Disney.
Starting in 2001, Adler and his small Atlanta-based animation company Fathom Studios toiled for years on a tight budget. They lined up voice actors including Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Kelly Ripa, and Anne Bancroft in her final role. When Adler couldn’t get a Hollywood studio interested in his movie, he raised eyebrows by releasing it himself through distributor-for-hire Freestyle Releasing. This may have doomed the film in many ways. Without a marketing budget, the film was swallowed up by the big-name Hollywood releases during the holiday season.
Or some would argue that it’s the quality of the movie that kept people away.
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.” The movie currently has a ranking of a D- on Yahoo movies and 16 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Whatever the reason, the movie now has the dubious distinction of being the lowest opening movie of all-time.
I think I saw an ad for that once…
Well RT (Which seems to hate scifi unless it’s blockbuster hits) and Yahoo… Can we get a review from one of the twelve people that saw this film?
Anyone?
I’m intrigued and would like to see it. I feel that a lot of love went into it, so it may be worth a look. (Don’t expect LotR or Wall-E and we may be surprised)
I think it’s sad that this kind of things happen. From that 40million they could have but a small amout of money to the marketing of the movie.
I haven’t seen the movie but I shure hope it will get back some of the money on DVD sales. The trailer looks like a computeranimated movie from the 1990:s and that does not promise much and when reading the premise of the movie it sound like a rip off of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings etc.