'Stinking Films' Responsible for Fox's Bad B.O.
October 18 -- Why hasn't 20th Century Fox done better at the box office lately? To paraphrase Allison Janney's about-to-get-fired West Wing character in the drama's season opener, "The movies were bad!"
“[We made] a couple of stinking films,” said Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corp, which owns Fox. At the annual general meeting today, Murdoch bluntly told shareholders that Fox had made “some mistakes” that led to “particularly disappointing results,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
While Murdoch didn’t single out any specific stinkers, the record is clear on which Fox films tanked this year; the most notable one was Titan A.E.. The animated sci-fi flick was budgeted upward of $85 million but made a measly $22.7 million. Its failure was followed by the resignation of studio head Bill Mechanic.
While Fox sat on top of the box-office pile in 1999 with $783 million in receipts, thanks mostly to Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, the studio has raked in only $507 million so far this year. Another disappointment this year was Me, Myself, and Irene. It took in only $90.5 million, which is considered low for a Jim Carrey film, especially one directed by There’s Something About Mary’s Farrelly brothers. Other flops include the Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer The Beach, which, with $39.8 million, barely managed to stay ahead of USA’s scrappy little Pitch Black on the 2000 charts.
Murdoch admitted, “We made some mistakes in the films we made and took some pretty nasty losses because of those films.”
The only bright spots on Fox’s movie palette this year have been the surprise smash X-Men, which, as of this past weekend, ranked as the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year with $156.5 million, and Big Momma’s House, which currently stands in 10th place overall with $117 million.
“There are other strong films coming, but it’s very dangerous to predict how they will do,” Murdoch said. The upcoming Fox slate includes the comedies Bedazzled and Monkeybone and the Oscar hopefuls Cast Away, Men of Honor, and Quills.
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