Animated 'Delgo' Has Worst Wide Release Opening Ever

Don't feel too left out if you missed seeing the animated adventure
movie "Delgo" this past weekend. No one did. In fact, the movie broke
a record for having the worst opening ever for a film in wide release.
"Delgo" earned a measly $511,920 this weekend on 2,160 screens, not
even breaking the top ten. That's an average of $237 per screen for
the three days. If you figure there were five screenings a day, and
assume ticket prices are about $8, that comes out to two people in the
theater per showing. By comparison, the Golden Globe-nominated drama
"Doubt" earned roughly the same amount of money, but it was only in 15
theaters.

This is all too bad because the story of the making of "Delgo" has the
makings of a great Hollywood underdog story. 36-year-old entrepreneur
Marc Adler decided he wanted to direct and produce a $40 million
computer animated kids' flick completely independent of Tinseltown
behemoths like Disney and Dreamworks.

Starting in 2001, Adler and his small Atlanta-based animation company
Fathom Studios toiled for years on a tight budget. They lined up an
impressive, if eclectic, cast of voice actors including Freddie Prinze
Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Kelly Ripa,
and Anne Bancroft in her final role (she died in 2005). And when Adler
couldn't get a Hollywood studio interested in his movie, he raised
eyebrows by releasing it himself through distributor-for-hire
Freestyle Releasing. It was a huge risk; one that ultimately didn't
pay off. There wasn't the sort of marketing budget needed to make a
film stand out in the already crowded holiday movie season.

Another problem was the quality of the movie. Or lack thereof. The
story -- star-crossed lovers squaring off against an evil queen on a
fanciful world divided between a reptilian people who can move rocks
with their minds and a sprite-like folk who like dragons -- borrows
liberally from "Star Wars," "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Dark
Crystal," just without the charm and intelligence. The script required
the efforts of six, count 'em, six screenwriters, including Adler. The
critics trashed it, giving it a dreadful D average on Yahoo!, which
proved to be lethal.

"Delgo" is not the only major wide release bomb of the year. Three of
the ten worst openings for films in over 2000 locations came out this
year. The raunchy teen sex comedy "College" and the thriller
"Deception," starring Hugh Jackson and Ewan MacGregor, both tanked,
garnering the sixth and ninth worst openings ever respectively. In
both of those cases, the studios dumped the movies with little fanfare
rather than spend millions on marketing a stinker.