NINE ranks No. 8 at the box office — Page 3

Just watched At The Movies. Scott from the Times ripped NINE a new you know what. Surprisingly, he thought the score was the weakest point of NINE. Watching a clip of Be Italian it does look like overkill. It would have worked better something like it was done on the stage.

Even though Tune has not done movies, I would loved for him to have done NINE the movie.

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Many of my friends (most of them women) told me they were interested in seeing it but after reading the reviews, they opted for IT'S COMPLICATED instead. So I do think the reviews had a lot to do with it, as well as bad word of mouth of course.
Part of me just has a hard time understanding how something like PAUL BLART which looked like the worst movie ever made was number one, and NINE only makes $5 mil. The mystery of the American public.
Phyllis, the reason I think NINE's failure will have a bigger impact on future movie musical projects than the travesty called ReNt is that rENt never sounded good on paper, it was an ill-conceived project from the star. They got Chris Columbus, one of the safest, cleanest, most boring and least creative directors to work in Hollywood today, as director. Then, they got one of the worst acting ensembles assembled in any movie musical (only one of them a name in Hollywood, and not even a big one), and the screenplay was ridiculously bad (not saying that NINE's isn't, but a screenplay by Oscar nominee Michael Tolkien and Oscar winner Anthony Minghella sounded a lot more promising). NINE had everything going for it on paper and it did terribly.

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I'd be very surprised if ROA tanked as a film.

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Well to be honest, who is casting these films? In what universe is Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, and Kate Hudson big box office. All of these women have been making stinkers that tank at the box office. Kidman has not had a hit in years. I have NO IDEA why studios bank on her and that mask of a face. If anything people will avoid these women at the cineplex.

Honestly, I think Fergie is the only one in the cast who is remotely "hot" at the moment.

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Updated On: 12/30/09 at 04:55 PM

I actually think marketing was to blame more than the movie itself (which I actually really liked). The movie was against STIFF competition -- Sherlock Holmes and Avatar (one of the biggest movies of the year if not potentially the decade) on one side, and more adult fare such as It's Complicated and Up in the Air on the other. There were virtually no trailers for Nine - many people I asked about it hadn't even HEARD about it.

Good or bad - I think better timing and better marketing would have had a huge impact.

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"How about also attributing Nine's failure to it being a lousy film instead of blaming it solely on its esoteric aspects? It failed because it isn't good."

A lot of very lousy films succeed. Some succeed so much that they have even lousier sequels, which also succeed.

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Yeah, that was covered on the second page of this thread.

I think "In The Heights" will do just fine if done right. With the Hip Hop/Latin/Pop score, I can see a lot of soundtracks being sold and word of mouth about towards teens/young adults to be pretty strong.

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It may be a rotten film (I haven't seen it, but among my friends, it's about 90% "dislike"), but in order for a musical to make it on the big screen these days, it has to be SENSATIONAL. "Normal people" don't do musicals, for the most part. (I put myself in the "abnormal" group, of course!) Unless it's part of the High School Musical franchise or something like that...then it'll succeed since it's made cheaply and for a very targeted audience.

I just have to say that whenever there is A LOT of pre-release marketing for a film, I assume it is expected to tank. I sensed a problem when they were releasing trailer after trailer and running commercials on TV like mad. Even though the trailers made the movie look good to me, I wondered why they were "giving it away for free" so readily. Often, that's done when they know the film's appeal as a whole is questionable. (This is completely unscientific, BTW. It's just been my observation over the years.)

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I hope they still make Spring Awakening into a movie. I would love for them to make it.

Bottom line: It was the combination of Marshall AND Condon that made "Chicago" a success.

One without the other, and you have NINE (lacking) and Dreamgirls (kinda lacking but still good).

Put them both together again, please. As hard as that would be ...

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I was going to say, I don't know about DVD rentals, but I do think that the majority of their profit is going to come from the international market, especially since the first (and only--apart from Variety) raves came from the London premiere. Plus, the look of the movie is much more European than American, especially with its international cast. I imagine it'll do better there. But I may be wrong, of course.

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That's an excellent point, Besty. I didn't care for DREAMGIRLS, but I thought CHICAGO was great fun. I guess Marshall without Condon is like Abbott without Costello and vice-versa.

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