By Rob Bricken in
Movies
Tuesday, Dec. 16 2008 @ 11:13AM
I wasn't planning on doing much more coverage of Delgo, the bizarre fantasy CG movie "starring" the voices of thespians like Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt, but circumstances have forced my hand. Did you see it this weekend? I can answer that for you--no, you did not. In fact, almost no one did. Delgo made half a million dollars during it's opening weekend, which might sounds kind of okay until you realize the movie opened in 2000 theaters.
That's $239 per theater, or maybe 25 tickets per theater per weekend--not per showing. I think you could pretty easily estimate 5 showing per day, so for three days, that's $24 earned in 15 showings. Box Office Mojo reports this as the lowest grossing movie to open that large...of all time.
That is failure on a monumental scale. I guess the filmmakers' bold choice of making the hero and most of the character hideous mockeries of the human form, hiring C-list actors to give them voices, and using cutting-edge-of-1998 CG graphics backfired on them. Who would've guessed?
19 comments
Comments
Endroren said:
Wow. Bravo, Delgo.
Looking at the other stats, here is one that did twice as well as Delgo...in 1986...on 1/2 as many screens...
GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords Atl $531,905 39.7% 1,045 $509 $1,338,264 3/21/86
daveh said:
I could ghave told them it would flop- my kids who are always looking for an excuse to go to the theater and have candy and sodas completely passed on this. It looked horrible during the trailers.
Will said:
It really is an amazingly off-putting style. It's cute... in a way... but it's hard to relate to such inhuman characters.
Also, I didn't even know that it opened. It's not like there was a lot fo press for it. Some trailers, yes, but that's not enough.
TexasReed said:
One major reason the film did so poorly was an absolute lack of advance press and/or trailers. The studio apparently just threw it out to test the water. Unfortunate. I may have to pick it up on DVD.
turnidoff said:
I never heard of this film until now.
2000+ screens and no advertising... hrmmm.
Teague said:
The what now? I haven't heard of this movie either. Man, the studio must have just given up on this thing.
Also, that character in the picture above looks like the love child of Bossk and Leech from the X-Men. This is not a good thing.
Jason said:
Their character design fell into the abysmal depths of the uncanny valley. They're a little too human to be endearing and cute, but they're also not human enough to be believable. And if you check out the trailer, it just looks like the dumbest story ever put to paper (or celluloid or whatever). They actually have the voice over spell out that the story stars "A princess and an unlikely hero". Wow. It really doesn't get any less imaginative than that.
Todd C said:
So this movie is the bad ending from Chrono Trigger where dinosaurs evolve into hideous, modern lizard-people?
Liz said:
This is the first time I have ever heard of this film. That's a sign, I think.
Liz said:
Apparently I blocked out your posting of the trailer. Huh. Thank you brain...sorry to remind you...
Snoodle said:
To be fair to it though, it was made in like 2001 (to explain how it looks) by a tiny tiny studio, and then dumped with no advertising this year. I remember wanting to see this years ago when it had a website and a trailer...:(
I hate when studios dump movies...any movies.
Paul said:
It seemed like a low budget outing that should have gone straight to DVD. As everyone has already said the creature designs don't work for a film and the fact there was almost no advertising certainly didn't help.
I'm sure though that there will be a cult audience 20 years from now that will be buying 200 dollar Delgo statues from Japan.
Fabulous Retard said:
Honestly, I've never even HEARD of this movie.
Arcane said:
The most I saw of this was it got a banner ad in my On Demand menu.
The Shadow said:
I saw it on Sunday, and it wasn't that bad. The plot was something I had seen a hundred times before (two nations slouching toward war through mutual misunderstanding, helped along by evil opportunists), but the fantasy world was well realized, and the voice cast was good. It also had a fair amount of violence (it doesn't sugar-coat the fact that in war, people get killed), and there is one heroic character who ruins his career with a gambling problem, something that I thought was pretty ambitious for a kids' film.
NeoXorn said:
They should have made it straight to DVD.
Also, a little promotional & marketing push would help.
Jay said:
The only time I saw a preview for this movie was when I was one of the twelve people who saw "City of Ember." The animation is so shoddy that I thought it was going to end up being one of those fake "turn off your cell phone" trailers they stick in front of movies. Needless to say I waited the entire time for a ring tone that never was...
TimO said:
Basic rule of thumb is that advertising DOUBLES the cost of a movie - meaning this $40million bomb would have set back investors $80million if it had been advertised.
Still.... $240 per theater.... woof!
Liz said:
TimO, it may double the cost of the movie, but you don't recoup jack if NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT. If they were counting on word of mouth alone, they were idiots.
