Tag Archives: Worst Opening of All Time

Worst Opening Weekend of All Time?!

This is from Entertainment Weekly, concerning the dismal box office take of the film The Oogieloves, released this past week:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/09/02/oogieloves-big-balloon-adventure-worst-box-office-debut-flop/

These are the most telling numbers regarding what the movie earned over the weekend (I’ve bolded the truly jaw dropping stats):

According to studio estimates, the colorful toddler-targeting entry, which is being distributed by Kenn Viselman Presents (Viselman formerly found massive success as producer of The Teletubbies), earned a truly awful $448,131 from 2,160 theaters in its debut three-day weekend.

That gross yielded a per theater average of $207. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: $207!

Just how low is that? Let’s pretend that the average ticket price for each customer was about $7 this weekend. That would mean that only 30 people saw Oogieloves at each theater — across all its showings — over the past three days.

Yikes!

Perhaps the worst part of all this is that, according to the article, the movie’s budget was an incredible $20 million to produce and another $40 million to promote!

Yikes, redux!

Saddest of all was the fact that I caught actor Chazz Palminteri on one of those morning shows on Friday promoting the film.  He seemed like he was pleased with it and happy to have worked on something intended for very, very young viewers.  But…he’s Chazz Palminteri.  Whenever I think of him, what floats in my mind are mob/crime dramas.  Adult fare like The Usual Suspects.  Yet there he was, surrounded by people dressed in the Oogieloves’ costumes.  Needless to say, he looked really out of place.

Looking at the cast of the film over at IMDB.com, I was surprised to see so many recognizable names among it.  Did they actually appear on film or simply provide voices to the characters?  I don’t know.

I’m not all that interested in finding out, either.