"Ride with the Devil"

[LauriD]

My question: why do good films flop?

Watched the 1999 "Ride with the Devil" last night and was impressed. It's about Civil War irregulars in Missouri - with plenty of action, an unsentimental love story, and an intelligent script. Directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, etc.), written by James Schamus, with terrific acting by attractive young stars (Tobey Maguire, Jim Caviziel, etc.), nice cinematography, even a good soundtrack. I thought it compared very favorably with, for example, "Unforgiven," which I found deadly slow and over-poetic but which was both a hit and an award-winner.

Yet this $35 mil film was released on only 8 screens and never even hit $1 mil at the domestic box office. The only award it won was from the History Channel.

So why did the studio (apparently) dump this film? Is it the curse of the Civil War movies? ("Cold Mountain" was also a B.O. disappointment but at least it got a decent release...)

LauriD

[sidneyfalco]

I'm just guessing here but here's what I think happened.
First off it didn't cost 35 million. That's just a figure people throw out. It may/may not include P&A.

In many cases, these art films are pickups from foreign sales deals. In RWTD case Canal Plus financed a portion of the film, maybe 50% for foreign territories. In any case, its a figure they use to justify their price to foreign sales territories.

But even if it did cost 35 million I doubt Universal paid for the whole thing. Maybe they paid 15-20. So it was low risk for them. 15-20 million is what you risk on a teen sex comedy with no stars.

When USA Films/Universal saw the film they thought it was good but it wasn't GREAT. Then they showed it to critics who liked it but didn't go berzerk over it. Some critics hated it. So USA wasn't going to get any more money from Univerisal to promote it.

Since USA Films/Universal didn't have a slam dunk and no support from Universal probably what happened is they decided to dump it in a dozen theaters. If there was a groundswell of support, academy award nominations for Tobey or someone, they would then risk more advertising money to go wider.

However, there was not. 1999 was a great year for films - I mean 1939 GREAT. There were about a dozen other films which were better that year including American Beauty, 3 Kings, Being John Malkovich (also relased by USA), etc. So USA decided to put all their efforts into Being John Malkovich since that was probably a winner with Academy members.

Plus USA was never really a strong company, with 3 incarnations over the years (Gramercy, USA and now Universal Focus) and various execs backstabbing each other. There was no Harvey Weinstein figure to promote the movie out of obscurity.

With no stars (Tobey McGuire wasn't Spiderman yet and Jim Caviezel wasn't Jesus yet), no Harvey, no critical support and a dozen other better films, the academy ignored it and it went quickly to video.

[jimjimgrande]

it probably tested poorly

[NikeeGoddess]

big screen features need a distribution company to get their flick out there. maybe they never made any deals with one. there are tons of flicks made and never get released either.

[bottomlesscup]

Having seen it, it probably failed because it was boring.

Also, the marketing failed to play up the "Jewel breast-feeding" angle as much as it should have.

[theturnaround]

I remember seeing commercials for that film... isn't it weird that they would put out an ad campaign for a film that was headed for 8 screens? Granted, I'm sure if it was successful they would have expanded, but still... (scratches head)

theturnaround