FreestyleReleasing Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Is 'Delgo' the Biggest Flop of All Time?
Filed under: New Releases », Box Office »
There's a story making the rounds -- originating, as best I can tell, with this post over at Yahoo! Movies -- making the case that this past weekend's minor computer-animated effort Delgo is, to paraphrase, the biggest wide-release bomb of all time. Is that right? As usual, it depends on how you look at it. If you limit your scope to films released in over 2000 theaters -- Delgo occupied 2,160 -- then the raw numbers back up this claim: Delgo's $237 weekend per-screen average and $511,920 gross easily top the chart of all-time worst openings in that category. On the other hand, just this September a quasi-documentary called Proud American opened on 750 screens and managed an even more impressive $128 per-screen average. And Delgo even has competition this December: just the week before, the Alan Rickman action comedy Nobel Son opened on 893 screens to a comparable $374 per-screen average.
Both Delgo and Nobel Son were distributed by Freestyle Releasing, an independent distributor-for-hire. Freestyle fared slightly better with The Haunting of Molly Hartley over Halloween and much better with this summer's limited-release Bottle Shock. The lesson here, I think, is that unless you've got something that's easy to market (e.g. the PG-13 horror of Molly Hartley) and the budget to market it, an independently-arranged wide (or semi-wide) release is a very dicey proposition. Trying to shove a low-profile animated family film into the marketplace during the holidays is even dicier.
Delgo may be the biggest wide-release flop of all time, but no one will remember its failure like they remember Cutthroat Island and Last Action Hero: not because Delgo was low-budget (it reportedly cost $40 million), but because it was, for all intents and purposes, set up to fail.
Freestyle Gambles on the Boll Game
Filed under: Action », Comedy », Horror », Games and Game Movies »
When Uwe Boll needed House of the Dead to be distributed in North America, he went to Artisan. (For the record, Artisan is now extinct.) For Alone in the Dark he went with Lionsgate, and they learned their lesson pretty fast. When it came time for BloodRayne, Boll had a fiasco with a company called Romar. But for his next three films, all of which are already "in the can" (and man can he really crank those movies out!), Dr. Boll has signed a deal with Freestyle Releasing, distributor of titles like Find Me Guilty, Civic Duty and Dirty Deeds.Those who've been eagerly anticipating the star-studded Dungeon Siege flick will have to wait until January 18 of next year. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Freestyle and Boll are planning a 2,500 screen release and they plan to spend about $20 million in marketing. (Yeah, but it's still coming out in the middle of January, and we all know what that means.) For those who love goofy ensembles, I'll remind you that In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (the title reeks of future sequels, doesn't it?) stars Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, Ray Liotta, Ron Perlman, Matthew Lillard, John Rhys-Davies, Claire Forlani, Kristanna Loken and Burt Reynolds as King Konreid. Seriously, I can't wait.
We won't have to wait as long for Uwe Boll's Postal adaptation, which Freestyle plans to release in 500 theaters on September 28. That one's a Troma-lookin' splat-sick type of comedy that stars Zack Ward, Dave Foley, Seymour Cassel and Verne Troyer as himself. As far as the hardcore horror flick Seed is concerned, no date is set just yet, but Freestyle seems to be aiming for early next year. (And if they release the movie as "Uwe Boll's Seed" I simply won't go see it. That's just gross.)
Freestyle co-president Marke Borde had this to say about the three-flick deal: "I don't chase movies based on video games and any pre-awareness that those franchises might have with an audience. I chase movies that are good."
No comment.
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