Fox Searchlight's 'Amelia': How did it make it onto the runway?

I know that all of America was queasily captivated last week by the bizarre "is it real or isn't it" Balloon Boy escapade. But here in Hollywood, heads are scratching over an equally puzzling mystery: How did Fox Searchlight, which has easily the best box-office best batting average of any specialty film company in the business, get stuck with a turkey like "Amelia"?

A cloyingly earnest historical drama based on the exploits of Amelia Earhart that arrives in 800 theaters Friday, the film features Hilary Swank as the daring aviatrix who suddenly disappeared in 1937 over the central Pacific while trying to fly around the world.

The reviews have been awful, with the film so far having earned a paltry 20 from Rotten Tomatoes. Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum described the movie as "square, still and earthbound" while Variety's Justin Chang calls it a "dismayingly superficial" film full of "inspirational platitudes."

Meanwhile, the box-office tracking for the film, directed by Mira Nair, has been grim. According to numbers from the OTX tracking service, younger moviegoers have zero desire to see the movie. And even older moviegoers, who would normally make up the largest segment of potential moviegoers, are unenthusiastic. The film's "definite interest" numbers among over-30 females, the niche most likely to see the film, were a mediocre 19%, even less than the number of over-30 women eager to see "Saw VI."

Searchlight, which normally gives its films a platform release, has clearly decided it should get as much as it can out of the movie as quickly as possible before the bad buzz spreads, hence the 800-screen release this weekend. But how did Searchlight get caught holding the bag with such a stinker? No one is talking for the record, but my sources close to the production say the company made a rare misstep -- it got involved with a production it didn't control.

As it turns out, most of the funding for "Amelia's" roughly $40-million budget came from Ted Waitt,  co-founder of Gateway computers, who had a personal fascination with the Earhart saga. Just before the film went into production last year, Searchlight acquired worldwide distribution rights, putting up a minority stake in the budget and footing the bill for the film's marketing expenses. At the time, judging from the script co-written by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, the studio felt "Amelia" could be a historical drama with the kind of uplift and emotional intensity of a film like "Out of Africa." Searchlight also had strong relationships with the film's talent, having released Nair's "The Namesake" and Swank's "Boys Don't Cry."

But movies are all about execution, not just expectations, and by the time Nair delivered a finished film, it was clear that she'd missed the mark, at least when it came to uplift and emotional intensity. Searchlight still believes it can woo over-50 women into seeing the film, even with its lousy reviews. Its execs make the argument that older women still came out in droves to see period films like "The Other Boleyn Girl"  and "The Changeling," which were poorly reviewed but had strong female characters that drove older women into the multiplexes. However, a comparison to "The Changeling" seems like a big stretch, since it had the cachet of both Angelina Jolie and director Clint Eastwood, not to mention considerably better reviews (earning a 61 at Rotten Tomatoes). "The Other Boleyn Girl" is a better model, but it only made $26.8 million in its domestic release.

Searchlight believes that if it could do a similar mid-20s number in the U.S. it could come out OK, especially if it could attract a similar percent of moviegoers around the globe. I think they're being overly optimistic. Judging from the reviews, "Amelia" will end up being another in a long list of examples of historical films shunned by today's moviegoers, who appear less interested than ever in movies whose stories are firmly rooted in the past.

Comments

[joelle]

No really, this movie is awful. I saw it in a screening last year in LA and it was horribly done. They did not do justice to Amelia Earhart's legacy... and instead focused on a love triangle... it didn't have depth and it was lazily pieced together. Do not waste your money. Amelia Earhart deserves a better film.

[Hollywood Insider]

The amateur that wrote this article repeats the myth that films set in the past - or "period pieces" - don't make money.

Historical films do extremely well, in general. Something like 12 of the last 20 Academy Award winners were period pieces - they all made a lot of money. A look at the top film grossers of all time will prove this - a healthy dose of them were period pieces. Titanic, Gladiator, English Patient and Elizabeth. By percentage, period movies actually do better that films set in the present tense.

It's really too bad that Ron Bass and Nair made what looks to be a very boring film. Swank has always been a pretty flat actress. This is a tragedy because now it's going to hurt other writers and directers who try to finance and make female centered films.

The key to making money on movies is to make good movies.

[NitPicky]

Although I do agree that this movie is going to bomb at the box office - there are simply too many more crowd-pleaser films out right now for this movie to do much more than a $20MIL cume. However, what I want to be nitpicky about is the title you're giving the Angelina Jolie directed Clint Eastwood movie. The title is "Changeling" NOT "The Changeling." "The Changeling" brings to me a bad 1980ish horror flick with George C. Scott.

[NitPicky]

Oops...while I was correct you, I made a typo myself! LOL. That should be "...the Angelina Jolie movie directed by Clint Eastwood..."

[Darnce]

The attempt made by this article to sabotage this movie reminds me of Barack Obama trying to sabotage Fox News. GO SEE THIS MOVIE.

[camorton]

I agree this is a poorly written article. You spend the entire time establishing the fact that the movie was poorly made and has therefore gotten rotten reviews then conclude by saying it will fail because there is no audience for period dramas. Back to J-school for you, dude.

[Erin M]

I saw this over the weekend with my husband. We both enjoyed it. I wish Hollywood made more movies based on interesting periods in history. I would rate this 3 stars out of 4 easily. I would have gone for 4 stars had the story of Earhart's personal relationships been drawn out a bit more.

[Ashley]

Hard to believe on Rotten Tomatoes Saw VI's reviews are twice as good as Amelia's (43 vs 18)... Movie Review Intelligence (http://www.moviereviewintelligence.com) has Amelia at 43.9% and Saw VI at 25.5%, which makes more sense.

[C.J.]

Someone spun straw from the golden source material of Earhart's own words and poetry. There should have been weeping in the house at the end of the film but the emotional disconnect from the content frankly hurt more. Where was the fascination and the science of the time, perhaps with the metal air sample tubes taken for microscopic research by Noonan on the final flight, sealed and dormant on the ocean floor. Hilary Swank remains one of the finest actors of this generation with this born-to-be, pure and honest performance and she successfully offsets computer generated fakery in every frame. Sadly, the peripherals and redundant score ground what should have been a contender. Read Amelia's own books, smell the orange groves in blossom at 10,000 ft and rejoice in one flyer's true immortal spirit.