Animated 'Delgo' Has Worst Wide Release Opening Ever
by Jonathan Crow   
December 15, 2008

Don't feel too left out if you missed seeing the animated adventure movie "Delgo" this past weekend. No one did. In fact, the movie broke a record for having the worst opening ever for a film in wide release. "Delgo" earned a measly $511,920 this weekend on 2,160 screens, not even breaking the top ten. That's an average of $237 per screen for the three days. If you figure there were five screenings a day, and assume ticket prices are about $8, that comes out to two people in the theater per showing. By comparison, the Golden Globe-nominated drama "Doubt" earned roughly the same amount of money, but it was only in 15 theaters.

This is all too bad because the story of the making of "Delgo" has the makings of a great Hollywood underdog story. 36-year-old entrepreneur Marc Adler decided he wanted to direct and produce a $40 million computer animated kids' flick completely independent of Tinseltown behemoths like Disney and Dreamworks.

Starting in 2001, Adler and his small Atlanta-based animation company Fathom Studios toiled for years on a tight budget. They lined up an impressive, if eclectic, cast of voice actors including Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Kelly Ripa, and Anne Bancroft in her final role (she died in 2005). And when Adler couldn't get a Hollywood studio interested in his movie, he raised eyebrows by releasing it himself through distributor-for-hire Freestyle Releasing. It was a huge risk; one that ultimately didn't pay off. There wasn't the sort of marketing budget needed to make a film stand out in the already crowded holiday movie season.

Another problem was the quality of the movie. Or lack thereof. The story -- star-crossed lovers squaring off against an evil queen on a fanciful world divided between a reptilian people who can move rocks with their minds and a sprite-like folk who like dragons -- borrows liberally from "Star Wars," "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Dark Crystal," just without the charm and intelligence. The script required the efforts of six, count 'em, six screenwriters, including Adler. The critics trashed it, giving it a dreadful D average on Yahoo!, which proved to be lethal.

"Delgo" is not the only major wide release bomb of the year. Three of the ten worst openings for films in over 2000 locations came out this year. The raunchy teen sex comedy "College" and the thriller "Deception," starring Hugh Jackson and Ewan MacGregor, both tanked, garnering the sixth and ninth worst openings ever respectively. In both of those cases, the studios dumped the movies with little fanfare rather than spend millions on marketing a stinker.

Zac Efron may have crushed the tween girl demographic back during his High School Musical days, but We Are Your Friends – his coming of adult age vehicle about the EDM scene – has become another film headlined by the actor that has failed to light up the box office.

In We Are Your Friends, Efron stars as a 23-year-old DJ and music producer trying to make it in the San Fernando Valley. The film, directed by Max Joseph (Catfish: The TV Show) and costarring Wes Bentley and Emily Ratajkowski, was targeted at two demographics – young women, and lovers of EDM – and its soundtrack features tracks by Hook N Sling, Will Sparks, The Americanos, Scenic, Pyramid and others. Released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the U.S., it proved unable to find success domestically during its opening frame.

According to Box Office Mojo, We Are Your Friends now boasts the title of third worst wide-release debut in recent Hollywood history; state-side, the film took in $1.77 million on 2,333 screens, which comes out to a poor $758 per screen. If you’re even heard of the worst two U.S. wide film releases not counting the Saw 10th anniversary re-release (Delgo and Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure), then you clock even more time at the cineplex than most die-hard cinephiles do.

Poor Warners...poor, poor Warners...

It had a $6 Mill budget and minimal marketing, so they're not jumping out of windows. But now they know to keep him as the douche sidekick and not as the sole headliner.

It had a $6 Mill budget and minimal marketing, so they're not jumping out of windows. But now they know to keep him as the douche sidekick and not as the sole headliner.

We Are Your Friends... and even we hate you.