Cash poison
As box-office poison ( English : box office poison ) is in the film industry and in the theater industry refers to an object or a person you because of multiple failures at the box office ( " Box Office Bombs as financially rewarding or looks even be detrimental to production") .
The term is mostly used derogatory and is often controversial. Typical focal points are actors who, although brilliant in demanding roles, do not achieve any box office results that would be worthwhile for the studios. Certain directors or topics are also often burdened with this prejudice, which can be more or less justified.
For some, however, a cash-poison image already points to commercial-independent artistic quality. Numerous films that were not very successful at the box office achieved cult status over the course of time . B. the works of Ed Wood .
Examples
A well-known recent example is Mars . The exploration of this planet has been processed into several major Hollywood films ( Red Planet , Mission to Mars , Ghosts of Mars , Mars Needs Moms ), all of which were financial flops. The Mars adventure John Carter - Between Two Worlds (2012) turned out to be one of the greatest failures in production history for Walt Disney Studios . In addition, the film brought in a loss of millions for the company and is one of the biggest flops in film history. In 2015, the film The Martian - Rescues Mark Watney was at least one of the top ten most successful films of the year in the USA.
A reputation as box office poison can also deceive or change: For a long time , fantasy was regarded as box office poison in the film industry, until the director and producer Peter Jackson achieved a sensational series of successes with his film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and a real fantasy Boom set in.
Something similar happened with science fiction . It was considered a box office poison until Star Wars hit theaters in 1977 , broke the trend and became the most successful film in cinema history to date. The interest of film studios in bringing pirate films to cinemas dropped dramatically after The Pirate Bride was released in 1995 . This film turned out to be the biggest commercial flop to date and was one of the reasons for the bankruptcy of the production company Carolco Pictures . Since then, the genre has been seen as a classic box office poison. It was not until 2003 that Walt Disney Pictures released the pirate film Pirates of the Caribbean and achieved great success, which has been followed by four sequels (2006, 2007, 2011, 2017).
Individual evidence
- ^ Lars-Olav Beier , Martin Wolf: Kino: Kassengift Superstar? In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 2008, p. 126-128 ( Online - Jan. 14, 2008 ).
- ↑ Cole Haddon: Amanda Peet: Box-Office Poison? In: film.com. October 30, 2007, accessed April 22, 2015 .
- ↑ filmsite.org: Cultfilms
- ↑ filmfreunde.net: Ghosts of Mars - Facts ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Financial Times Deutschland.net: The Biggest Flops in Film History ( Memento from March 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive )