News & Notes Inside the Week in Film

Last Place is Merely First Place for the Losers

A very strange thing happened over Labor Day weekend: A film opened with the worst box office take in Hollywood History.

by Chris Neumer

The age old adage is that any publicity is good publicity, but when this phrase was coined, it’s doubtful that anyone was aware of the kids film, The Oogieloves.  Frankly, it’s debatable as to whether anyone is aware of this film now that it’s been released either.  The Oogieloves made the Hollywood record books over the weekend with an almost mind-bogglingly low per-screen average of $207.  With an average ticket price of almost $8 in America, this means that only 25 people saw The Oogieloves at each theater where it was playing… during the entire weekend.  Granted, The Oogieloves’ trailer was terrible and made me want to jam a fork into my ears so I wouldn’t have to experience the world’s worst and most grating voiceover announcer, words such as ‘scientastic’ and the decision to call Cloris Leachman one of the world’s coolest stars, but I digress.

On the surface, this is really bad, but not close to the catastrophe of the infamous $30 per theater (and cumulative) take of the film Zyzzyx Road.  There was one major difference: Zyzzyx Road played at only one theater and had one showing at day, at noon.  The Oogieloves played in 2,160 screens and had roughly 4-5 showings a day on each screen.

This Labor Day weekend, Americans did something together: they didn’t go see The Oogieloves.  (It’s not as fun to point out that since the ticket prices for kids and matinee showings are reduced, the actual number of people who saw this is definitely higher than two per showing, but is something to consider).

However, there are two truly unusual elements to The Oogieloves situation that set it well apart from the usual box office bomb crowd.

#1: The Oogieloves is an interactive film.

Oh yes, you read that correctly.  The Oogieloves is an interactive film.  Breaking from the nearly hundred-year old mold of filmmaking where a movie’s characters won’t tell the audience members to do things during the course of the film, The Oogieloves’ characters often instruct the people in the audience (read: kids) to dance around and sing.

The Oogieloves’ producer and creator, Kenn Viselman, had the opportunity to see Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail in a theater, loved the way that audience interacted with the on-screen characters and decided to integrate that into his kids film.

It’s an interesting concept that like smell-o-vision, feel-around and 4-D theaters just doesn’t seem like it would ever quite catch on.  And it didn’t.

As an aside, Viselman co-produced the Teletubbies series—the trailer for The Oogieloves lables him the “marketing visionary of Teletubbies”—and originally wanted to make a feature film involving them.  However, for what should now be obvious reasons, he couldn’t get the green light to do so from his Teletubbies producing partner, so he decided to do the next best thing: he basically ripped off the Teletubbies and created the Oogieloves.  The Teletubbies features four large, brightly colored, somewhat human shaped things named Dipsy, Laa-Laa, Tinky-Winky and Po who behave in a generally curious fashion; The Oogieloves features three large, brightly colored, somewhat human shaped things named Zoozie, Toofie and Goobie who behave in a generally curious fashion.

#2 Viselman responded to interview requests about The Oogieloves’ box office take.

There is a somewhat standard procedure for how to handle negative stories in the media.  The negative story comes out and the subject of the story either ignores it or issues an immediate denial of all the facts reported in the story.

The producers of Delgo followed the former, while Tom Cruise and his PR team tend to follow the latter.

Delgo was released to theaters in late August of 2011 and, at the time, made history for only pulling in $237 per screen, a mark that The Oogieloves shattered.  No one from the film said much of anything and it faded into oblivion.

When Vanity Fair reported how the Church of Scientology had been trying to find Cruise a prospective wife—and, may I just say, I am extremely jealous of the fact that Cruise has an entire team of people trying to find him a date—Cruise’s reps came out and stated that the story was false.

Viselman decided to take a different approach: he talked to the media and took such an unapologetically positive point of view about The Oogieloves’ opening weekend box office take that it made me wonder whether he was insane.

Talking to thewrap.com, Viselman stated, “This was never about box office, it was about exposure. We’ve now got the notoriety we were trying to get for weeks before the film opened… The attention we’re getting as a result of this is going to help our video on demand and DVD campaigns and it’s going to help the next films.”

The movie cost a reported $20 million to make and still more to market.  Opening weekend, it brought in $448,000 and Viselman and company are going to substantially cut back the number of screens showing the film going forward, reducing The Oogieloves’ potential box office take even more… and the man is talking about sequels?  Plural?

I can’t help but wonder how The Oogieloves DVD will do with the words “Worst Ever Box Office Take” printed in large 36-point font above the title.

I like Viselman’s optimism but can’t see how having the biggest office failure ever on your resume will open any doors or help sway people to invest in your ideas going forward.

Well, This is Just Awkward Now…

Director Tony Scott committed suicide about two weeks ago.  No one can be happy that the P&A materials for his latest project, the series Coma that aired over Labor Day weekend, prominently feature a dead body on a slab.

by Chris Neumer

The big Hollywood news two weeks ago was that famed director, Tony Scott, committed suicide.  Scott was one of the artistically least artistic directors in the Southland, a fact that will sound like damning with faint praise, but is in no way intended to be. The man was an absolute master at making mediocre movies look fantastic.

It may sound glib, but the one element of his suicide that Scott never seemed to take into consideration was the timing of it.  It came less than two weeks before the premiere of his latest endeavor, the A&E Mini-Series Coma.

Go to any entertainment site on the web and there, plastered prominently above the site name and occasionally as the background, is the Ridley Scott and Tony Scott presented show, Coma.  The ad is topped off with a close up of a dead body’s feet that can be seen hanging off the end of a gurney.

If the image makes anyone think of anything other than Tony Scott’s unfortunate death, it would surprise me.  A&E cannot be happy with the way this played out.  Adding insult to (death and) injury, the name of the Scott brothers’ production company?  Scott free.

Well, then…

Number 2,160

The two biggest box office flops of all time have something very unusual in common.

by Chris Neumer

Delgo and The Oogieloves have the two worst box office openings for films showing on more than 2,000 screens.   Both opened in late August, both were animated and geared towards kids and, more curiously yet, both opened in exactly 2,160 theaters.

The Photo of the Week

Independence Day

The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

1) Actress/singer Mandy Moore is a huge fan of Ultimate Fighting.

2) It costs $3.00 to get a glass of Coke with dinner in the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.  $3.00.

3) The movie High School High is produced by “The Producer Formerly Known as David Zucker”.

4) The last name of the CEO of the Toyota company is Toyoda.

5) Cher’s song “Believe” has a dance mix.