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Crowe, Cage and Penn bomb out
25/12/2006 12:48 - (SA)
Los Angeles - Oscar winners Russell Crowe, Nicolas Cage and Sean Penn have starred in some of the year's biggest box office bombs and so proved that even A-list stars are not invincible.
According to an analysis published by Variety on Sunday, Crowe struck out with the romantic comedy A Good Year, Cage struck out with horror remake Wicker Man, and Penn bombed with another remake, the political saga All the King's Men.
High-profile directors such as M Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water) and Wolfgang Petersen (Poseidon) also made the hall of shame with their waterlogged movies.
Other films among the magazine's 10-biggest box office bombs were the erotic thriller sequel Basic Instinct 2, the World War One aviation saga Flyboys, the cartoon Flushed Away, the transcendental love story The Fountain and the urban kidnapping thriller Freedomland.
Variety said its alphabetically ordered list was determined by looking primarily at the ratio between a film's cost and its revenues.
It noted that financial loss could be divided among various studios and other equity investors, while international box office receipts and DVD sales could restore some luster.
$90m Flushed Away shortfall
Based on figures cited in the article, the most unprofitable film appeared to be Basic Instinct 2, a $70m film that earned $5m in the United States and continued actress Sharon Stone's 11-year string of bombs.
But the German-backed film's domestic distributor, Sony Corp's Columbia Pictures, said at the time of its release that its financial exposure was limited.
More-spectacular misfires included Flushed Away with a $90m shortfall between cost and domestic sales, and Poseidon, which had a $100m deficit but did well outside the US.
Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros Pictures, which had a dismal year at the box office, was the domestic distributor of four of the pictures: The Fountain, Lady in the Water, Poseidon and Wicker Man.
Columbia Pictures, the market leader with 13 No 1 movies in 2006, also released All the King's Men and Freedomland.
Closely held Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc handled Flyboys, although software billionaire Larry Ellison put up almost half of the $60m budget.
News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox released A Good Year. Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures released Flushed Away.
- Reuters
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South Africa
