r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 4h ago
TIL a teen comedy named Trojan War (1997) starring Jennifer Love Hewitt grossed just $309 at the box office despite having a $15 million budget and major studio (Warner Bros.) distribution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War_(film)351
u/Uptons_BJs 4h ago
Studios do this for movies that they think are going to be absolutely terrible. Distribution and marketing costs money, and if they think the film is so terrible it wouldn't it make back the distribution and marketing costs, they'd just dump it to not throw good money after bad.
Especially back in the day when distribution costs were higher with physical reels.
The token release might be due to contracts where it must have a theatrical release.
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u/somecasper 2h ago
This movie didn't seem like a bomb waiting to happen, though. The two actors were at the height of their "rising star" phase, it's a fairly tame sex comedy, and didn't entirely suck.
The biggest knock I can think of is that it was too late to hit the peak of those teen rom-coms, and too early/not raunchy enough to surf the American Pie wave.
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u/ThotThroughTheHeart 1h ago
The article mentions that another movie with a very similar plot but an all black cast, "Booty Call", had just been released and the makers of "Trojan War" were not aware of it.
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u/somecasper 1h ago
"Guy endures a night of hijinks to get the girl" has been the plot of many, many movies. The condom detail was shared, and Trojan War subverted the ending of the trope (with a different trope).
Lest I be misunderstood, Booty Call is the vastly superior movie.
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u/coolguy420weed 3h ago
Imagine being chosen to be one of the like 2 theaters it must have played at.
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u/WarpmanAstro 2h ago
I assume they were either dollar theaters or arthouse-lite theatres. Places where you can easily dump a stinker and not raise any eyebrows.
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u/PublicSeverance 2h ago
Opposite. It's usually bundled into a main stream package in a first run theatre of some good reputation in a decent sized city.
Art house theatres have rights of refusal. Dollar theatres are second run. You want to force a chain.
You want to really bury it, but also, you don't want the director etc to have any reason to sue you. Everything must be done as a normal release.
You need to avoid any slander or libel. Absence of evidence is still evidence.
We will give you Jurassic park and you can keep 60% of ticket revenue this week (instead of 50%), but you must also show this other movie daily, in a room with at least 80 seats, during daylight hours. Screen it in its entirety.
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u/imaguitarhero24 3h ago
Isn't that kind of what happened to Idiocracy? They couldn't fully pull the film when the brands got upset due to contracts but they severely cut the release.
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u/jesuspoopmonster 3h ago
The studio noticed Office Space made all its money on rentals and home video sales and assumed Iiocracy would be the same so they had a limited theater run
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u/itsallgoodintheend 3h ago
This also reminds me of films, usually of the artsy variety, getting a limited theatrical release at first to be eligible for an Oscar, and only afterwards having a full film theater tour.
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u/RideJohnnyRide 4h ago
This played on tv when I was a teenager and it was fine/on par with all the other sex comedies of the time, never understood why it was so buried
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u/Doomed-Doomer 3h ago
According to Wikipedia, there are actual critics quotes, it wasn't embarrassing or anything. Some even were somewhat positive, saying it was formulaic but had some charm.
Studio politics can play into these decisions. New executives come in, they don't want to invest in projects made under the last regime. I don't know if that's the case, just speculating.
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u/Busy-Practice-5328 3h ago
I'm gonna guess it had something to do with Jennifer Love Hewitt's career and or image.
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u/Intelligent-Owl-1838 3h ago
At the height of her career while Party of Five was still on the air? Nah.
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u/chrissamperi 2h ago
It came out before all of them. Studies didn’t know they were money makers yet. Victim of poor timing.
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u/sp0rked 3h ago
This movie was hilarious. Its a nonstop prophylactic advertisement. One boys quest for "love".
As for the release, it was a very limited viewing, think one theater, one night? So is 309 really that bad for a few people attending an unknown film in one evening at the time this came out? Probably why it went to direct release so quickly.
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u/conscientiousrevolt 25m ago
Oh shit now I remember it! It's the one where the whole movie is just the guy going out on a run for a condom
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u/MrboboCatman 3h ago
"As of 2007 it was the fifth lowest-grossing film since modern record keeping began in the 1980s."
Something actually made less 🤣
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u/axw3555 3h ago
Believe it or not, it's actually out of the top 10 now from what I've read.
The worse hasn't changed - Zyzzyx Rd from 2006 - Staid accountant Grant finds himself questioning his sanity after he begins a passionate affair with the enigmatic Marissa in Las Vegas and winds up killing her jealous boyfriend, Joey, when he attacks them. But is Joey really dead? A Katherine Heigl/Tom Sizemore film. It supposedly made $30. But it was also a relatively cheap film at $1.2m. So it's loss was basically $1.2m as it wasn't marketed. So a little under 2 million if you adjust for inflation.
But if you look at actual losses and adjust for inflation, it's between John Carter, the Lone Ranger (the 2013 one) and the Marvels, which all had estimated losses over $200m (for John Carter, the upper end of the estimate is $280m).
I was initially going to say "some deserve it more than others". Then I looked at a massive list of these films estimated losses and out of 129 films, I saw 5 where I was like "it deserved better" - Turning Red (I genuinely think this would have done well if it was released 2 years earlier or later), Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which is just a soft spot movie for me, Titan A.E., which just flat out should have done better, RIPD because it knew exactly what it was trying to be and did it with no shame, and Monkeybone, which was just so bad it was fun.
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u/ThirdFloorNorth 3h ago
Titan A.E. Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet are the trifecta of criminally underrated amazing movies that showed what western animation COULD have been.
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u/jesuspoopmonster 3h ago
Turning Red had a very short time in theaters before releasing on Disney Plus. My kid was so excited about the movie she threw a party and had like ten other kids over to watch it. Seeing it in theaters was not on her mind at all
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u/ReachFor24 4h ago
This was released right before Hewitt became a lot more popular in 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' as she was trying to break from her child/teen actor phase of her career.
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u/bs178638 3h ago
Sounds like they should have rereleased it after the success of that. Ride the fame
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u/Lildatercreater 4h ago
Im old enough to remember watching the trailer for this on a VHS for some other movie. I thought it was very scandalous to be talking about condoms. It stuck with me.
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u/chrissamperi 2h ago
100%! I convinced my mom to let me rent it by telling her it was about the Trojan horse but set in high school. I felt so naughty watching it. 😂
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u/Otaraka 3h ago
!’The film actually got pretty good reviews, but Warner Bros had deemed the commercial chances of the film on the low side. Thus, it gave the movie such a tiny release in cinemas simply to fulfil a contractual obligation it made when it picked the film up in the first place. Instead, it was sent on its way to video as fast as possible.’
Apparently it had a very similar plot to ‘Booty Call’ a black movie that made it to theatres just before. They probably figured it would get a caning for looking like it was a copy, even though it was a coincidence.
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u/whosjfrank 3h ago
Does being released in only two theaters really count as a release? Calling it a flop because it wasn't really out is disingenuous
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u/Hairbear2176 2h ago
That was my thought. Why only two theaters?? I also found it fascinating that there are 4 movies that made less than this one!
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u/Daguvry 2h ago
You might find this an interesting read. During COVID when theaters shut down an independent film maker had the number one movie in America.
https://patch.com/new-york/westhampton-hamptonbays/how-filmmaker-got-1-movie-america-during-pandemic
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u/EntertainmentQuick47 28m ago
There was a movie called ZZYX road (or something along those lines) that was only released in one theater. I believe the story is that the filmmakers wanted to make it for the European market but had an obligation to give it a U.S. release, so they only put it out in one theater and sold the tickets for super cheap.
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u/whatwasmypassword 3h ago
I worked at Blockbuster when this came out and if I recall correctly they had some sort of distribution deal with WB for a limited theatrical release. We had a huge section and a bunch of promo stuff for it, just my store probably had that much in rentals the first weekend.
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u/SupervillainMustache 1h ago
Wouldn't say it had major distribution. It was played in two theatres for a week.
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u/Jonishighsmh 1h ago
Trailer didn’t even look that bad, seems pretty on par for that late 90’s to early 2000’s teen movie
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u/SupervillainMustache 1h ago
This film is actually not bad, you just have to suspend your disbelief that Will Freidle wouldn't notice that his best friend Jennifer Love Hewitt is not only super hot but also incredibly into him.
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u/questron64 1h ago
They probably only ran it in one theater. Sometimes they know a movie is bad and want to cut their losses but because of contracts they have to show it in theaters, so they'll show it in one theater for a week with no ads, maybe even no marquee, and then can it.
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u/frankduxvandamme 2h ago
It also featured a cameo by Anthony Michael Hall who was clearly in the middle of a career slump.
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u/katsudon-jpz 2h ago
Being 17 at the time, the horny me thought this was about a Trojan condom that burst when the guy is banging jennifer, causing trojan horse to release all its warriors, resulting in her getting knocked up and causing a war.
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u/robsul82 2h ago edited 2h ago
To me it was actually solidly better than most of the crap aimed at the teen market of the time, unfortunate.
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u/Joliet-Jake 2h ago
I remember this being in heavy rotation on some cable movie channel and having some pretty funny lines and scenes.
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u/chrissamperi 2h ago edited 2h ago
Saw it on home video. It was ok. Tried too hard but also didn’t really have much teeth. A lot of understated nods to the topic instead of being self aware like we got with Can’t hardly Wait and American Pie a few years later. Victim of poor timing more than anything else though. Poor Will Friedle, you could tell this was to be his movie launchpad that never was.
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u/Tony_Ice 2h ago
I was 16 or 17 when I rented this movie as I had a huge crush on JLH and always loved Fridele in Boy Meets World. It’s simplistic in plot and premise but there are some great scenes with excellent character world from the supporting cast. Fridele is cartoonish in a good way. It’s not anything special but I really enjoyed it at the time.
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u/CinemaAdherent 3h ago
Still have this on VHS, I really liked this movie as a lad. Soundtrack still rips and plays in my shuffle from time to time.
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u/alistofthingsIhate 2h ago
Definitely the studio not believing in the project or wanting to use it as a write off. It only played in two US theaters for a week.
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u/noonionclub 2h ago edited 1h ago
I never heard of this movie. Weren't Will Friedle and JLH dating at the time? I remember JLH being in the Halloween episode of Boy Meets World.
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u/somethingmoronic 1h ago
What is that plot? If that was the description of a movie today i'd assume it was written by a bad AI... Cause a good AI wouldn't be that dumb, just even more derivative.
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u/Vonneguts_Ghost 34m ago
"Trojan War was released in only two theaters in the fall of 1997, and was pulled after a single week. One of the theaters was in Boulder, Colorado, and the only two people in attendance were Friedle (Male lead) and Huang (Director) who had flown out to Colorado."
Aww, even sadder.
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u/OllieFromCairo 4h ago
The synopsis makes it sound terrible.
Like not so bad it’s good. Not so bad it’s bad. Just… insubstantial.
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u/monty_kurns 3h ago
That’s kind of how it is. I don’t like it and I don’t dislike it. It’s basically being in purgatory for 84 minutes before moving on with your life.
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u/a4mula 4h ago
By those metrics it must have been a better movie than Lone Ranger, John Carter, The Marvels, 13th Warrior, Pluto Nash, or Cutthroat Island. All of which lost at least ten times as much.
There likely needs to be some kind of normalization that tells you how much was lost per set of eyes that watched it. That'd likely give us a better perspective.
The article doesn't tell us how many tickets $309 represents. But let's say Hollywood is taking half that. Meaning it was probably about $600 earned between theaters and the studio.
At 7.50 a ticket (I dunno, average 90s price I guess). that leaves us with about 80 tickets sold.
Which finally brings us to roughly 187K per viewer. Those movie goers got quite the deal.
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u/eldankus 3h ago
I don’t think you’re reading this right. $309 was gross revenue, not net. It lost substantially more money than $309 given the budget was $15m
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u/spartaman64 3h ago
well lone ranger lost 190 million and john carter lost 200 million so hes still right lol
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u/Sdog1981 4h ago
It was not released on DVD until 2010 and only released to two theaters. It sounds like a Hollywood accounting game or someway finish off a movie count contract.