Don't you think it's a bizarre world we live in when we can say that a
movie like FANTASTIC FOUR which pulled in $287,035,878 in four weeks
"tanked"?
Yeah, that is weird. However, when you troll reaction from major studios,
foreign box office returns are often considered the "fall-back" consolation
"prize" when a film that was supposed to do near $200 mil. domestically
falls well short. It's considered a "mixed bag" when "your film" doesn't do
as well as expected in your own "home country." And Fantastic Four took
such a beating from critics, combined with ill-word-of-mouth, that it
surprises me more that this American comic book "franchise" translated at
all overseas. I mean, I remember the Marvel days of the early 1960s when
Fantastic Four, was for a time, KING over Spider-Man. And then Spider-man
became the flagship for Marvel.
A similar situation occurred earlier this year with "Miss Congeniality 2:
Armed and Fabulous" -- it struggled to make just under $50 mil. by being in
release forever -- from March through June (as officially reported by
Variety) -- but its final worldwide total including the USA pushed it near
$80 mil., making it a tidy success relative to production cost. But perhaps
the best example is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Before the governor's career was
"terminated," his last several films flopped big time in the USA, but he was
such a worldwide box office star that he always did well overseas. There's
a "country of origin" bias when your films can't win audiences at home;
studios are gun-shy.
Woody Allen is an example of an "artsy" filmmaker who hasn't turned a
significant domestic profit since 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters." His
films are so shoe-string, that they could bring in a paltry $1 mil. in the
USA but he still makes up for it big time because he's such a hit in Europe.
Hence he's always allowed to make his "little" films because they rarely
lose money (nor make big money either).
-koose.
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