Monday, March 29, 2010

The Marketing of a Hollywood Bomb... Breaking a Box Office record in the wrong direction

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"This is not some small, independent movie. It's astonishing that only about 11 people could be bothered to go and see Uma Thurman."-- An astonished British film critic tries, unsuccessfully to understand the weekend viewing totals for Thurman's Motherhood.
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Is this the way to treat anyone's Mother?

It could very well be the greatest opening week box office flop in movie history for a feature film highlighting some major talent!

Motherhood a picture featuring the story of a stressed-out New York mother, played by Uma Thurman has managed to take in but 131 dollars on its opening weekend in England.

The tidings got even worse for the picture, its third day of release, Sunday saw only 11 dollars in ticket sales processed at the box office, apparently the cost of a single ticket into the theatre, and no doubt making for lots of room to find a good seat.

When the film was released in the United States back in October, the take for the opening weekend was a dismal $50,000, though considering the events of the weekend in England those were the golden days for this film's bank balance.

The weekend's sad receipts from England have the movies producers and boosters pointing the finger at the marketing people in the UK who apparently used a low profile, one theatre opening approach to building buzz.

The buzz is there we guess, but for all the wrong reasons.

The surprisingly low totals come for a movie that in addition to Thurman, featured appearances from Jodie Foster and Minnie Driver and cost 8 million dollars to produce.

And while producers and marketing minds (such as they are) try to work out some kind of strategy to increase the box office take (and recover some of these immense losses) in the weeks to come (or rush that direct to DVD contract into effect), they can still claim that their production is not the worst movie ever to arrive at a box office.

Cinema observers scoured the record books to see which film holds the record for the dubious distinction, and as they say at the Oscars, the winner is.... "My Nikifor," a film about a Polish artist,  which took in about $10 its debut weekend back in 2007.

The Reviews:

Internet Movie Database-- Motherhood
Rotten Tomatoes-- Motherhood
Cinemablend-- Motherhood
Film Arcade-- Motherhood
Huffington Post-- Motherhood

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