Why movies like Catwoman and the original Dune flopped at the box office

Dune, based on the 1965 novel of the same name by Frank Herbert, raked in a combined US$355 million with its recent two-part rendition by Denis Villeneuve – but an earlier version in 1984 flopped badly at the box office.

Daily Telegraph film critic Tim Robey delves into why 26 films, like Rex Harrison’s Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Catwoman (2004), didn’t make waves financially in his latest book Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops.

The earlier version of Dune was made by David Lynch, who went on to famously direct Blue Velvet, and was riding high on the success of his 1980 film The Elephant Man, but faced the prospect of living up to that fame, Robey says.

Despite having “phenomenal” costumes and sets and being promising, the film falls apart with so much of the novel crammed into one film, he told Afternoons.

“Lynch just runs out of room to tell the story and also as a very young man at the time he was not experienced in any way with handling a film on that scale.

“He’d only made a raised ahead in The Elephant Man and suddenly he’s given literally a cast of thousands and he’s having to shoot it in Mexico City. And it’s beyond him and it’s also not his wheelhouse to handle that kind of spectacle.”

It was so bad for Lynch that he fell into a depression making it and when it was re-cut and released on TV in the 1990s, he “disowned” it and took his name off, Robey says.

Often, it’s that pressure of wanting to make another hit after tasting success that has led directors on a path of ending up with epic fails, Robey says. The same could be said for D W Griffith’s 1916 silent movie Intolerance, which was an angsty response to critics of his previous infamous film The Birth of a Nation (1915).

“He was fuming about anyone criticising him. So he made a film basically trying to shut up his critics, basically, they’re the intolerant ones if you like. It’s about censorship and he made this ranty film, which in its original cut was eight hours long.

“He spent a fortune of his own money to make it, and the production was kind of a huge undertaking with thousands of extras in LA, a monumental thing. But unfortunately, America was entering the First World War and no one had time for whatever he was banging on about in this film.”

William Friedkin of The Exorcist (1973) fame fell into the same pitfalls when he believed was “better than any of those guys in the 1970s”, Robey says.

“He thinks whatever he makes next is going to be the biggest film of that year, so he makes a film called Sorcerer, which I actually think is tremendous. I think his talent really comes forward in the film, but the making it was a nightmare for the ages, and he alienated everyone.

“He fired five production managers, half of his crew were hospitalised because they were shooting it in the jungle in the Dominican Republic, and they all got tropical illnesses, the cast ended up hating him. Everyone was really in a very, very bad mood, with William Friedkin by the time this film came out and it cost so much money.”

But Sorcerer (1977) took the biggest hit when Star Wars came out three weeks before it was released.

“All anyone was interested in then was Star Wars. They wanted to escape into a galaxy far, far away. They did not want to watch a kind of hell on Earth ordeal about this like deadly adventure in the jungle for two-and-a-half hours, which is what he’d made.”

But the film has been restored into 4K and gaining a better reputation, Robey says, adding he believes it’s even better than The Exorcist.

Richard Fleischer’s Doctor Dolittle (1967), starring Rex Harrison, came at a time of “bloated, populist 1960s filmmaking [of] big musicals”, but audiences were becoming sick of being “force-fed” this content, Robey says.

“20th Century Fox spent a huge amount of on it and they still kept pushing it and promoting it even into the award season. It got like nine Oscar nominations, which is kind of insane, including Best Picture, but nothing could help it at the box office.

“America was well on its way into that [Vietnam War] by the late ’70s, and people wanted films that would reflect the darkness of the era rather than just kind of vapid escapism.

“Rex Harrison throughout it all was fuming and furious, and also not singing because he can’t sing and they said that he had the vocal range of like one and a half notes basically … that was the other problem. It’s just not a proper musical. It’s no Sound of Music, that’s for sure.”

These film flops also can hurt actors’ careers too, as in the example of Halle Berry when she starred in Catwoman (2004) off the success of Monster’s Ball (2001), Robey says.

“She’d been paid $14 million to make that film. There’s a record-breaking salary for a black actress in Hollywood … but the film was such a shambles. It was so unready and the script was like fished out of the bin, basically.

“They chose a director who was this visual effects supervisor who was really out of his depth and the film crashed and burned so badly that she really lost that status in Hollywood that she’d suddenly gained, which really cost her very, very, very badly.”

Although it can be hard to predict what actually turns out to be a disaster at the box office, because some films which received scathing criticism prior to release ended up being massive hits, like Titanic (1997) and Waterworld (1995).

“This happens because people get wind of how chaotic that the shoots are and how much trouble has or how many problems are going on on-set and then the knives are out,” Robey says.

“The Titanic had this extraordinary turnaround where the word of mouth after the pretty iffy first weekend of it opening to like 25,000,000, the word of mouth was so extraordinary that everyone just took them back and took all of their friends and their family again and again and again.

“It was number one at the box office for 15 weeks and it just like broke all the records. So that is a redemption for the ages.”

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