why the box office of this film is so poor?

It didn;t do that badly. It was number one in the US the week it was released in 1970 and was the twentieth highest grossing film that year.

Note that films back then rarely grossed anywhere as much as they do now. Six million in box-office then is equivalent to a hundred million today,(the top box office draw in 2012 grossed $1.5 billion while the top 1970 film grossed $106 million). Cost were also lower. Eastwood was receiving abut one million dollars a film back then, which would be the equivalent of about $3 million today adjusted for inflation. I doubt you would get an actor of his stature today for less then ten million.

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Guess folks just started to get a bit fed up with this type of fare - WW2 adventures - that had been very popular for nearly a decade, starting with Bums Of Navarone, I think.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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It was badly hurt by opening at the same time as Two Mules for Sister Sara: Eastwood even asked the studio "Why should I open on the other side of the street to myself?", but MGM's unpopular head James Aubrey had no faith in the picture and thought the 'goodwill factor' from Two Mules would help Heroes. Terrible reviews didn't help.


"Security - release the badgers."

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War action+Clint=5m only? can't believe this

A) The $5.2M figure actually represents the domestic rentals total for Kelly's Heroes, in other words the amount of money that actually goes back to the studio. The gross is generally about twice as high as the rentals figure, meaning that Kelly's Heroes likely grossed in excess of $10M. Indeed, the film topped the box office for the weekend of June 28, 1970, at $3,578,352.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1970_box_office_number-one_films_ in_the_United_States

Eastwood thus featured the number-one film at the box office for two consecutive weekends with two different movies: Two Mules for Sister Sara and Kelly's Heroes. However, the fact that Eastwood thus needed to compete against himself at the box office surely limited the box office grosses of both movies, even though both proved successful.

B) Indeed, a domestic gross of some $10M proved significant, if unspectacular, in those days. For 1970, Eastwood finished second in the Quigley's Annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll, the 'gold standard' for measuring a movie star's popularity in a given year. The poll surveys American and Canadian theater owners and exhibitors regarding the stars who best filled their theaters. Here were the polling results for 1970:

1970

Paul Newman
Clint Eastwood
Steve McQueen
John Wayne
Elliott Gould
Dustin Hoffman
Lee Marvin
Jack Lemmon
Barbra Streisand
Walter Matthau *

http://www.reelclassics.com/Articles/General/quigleytop10-article.htm

So Kelly's Heroes, like Two Mules for Sister Sara, scored at the box office; however, the two films could have proved more successful if they were not competing against each other. As the other poster indicated, MGM head Jim Aubrey, who decided to release Kelly's Heroes that June even though Universal's Two Mules for Sister Sara was already opening at about the same time (while having been filmed months earlier), constituted a real thorn.

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I think there was a fundamental flaw in this movie where the public couldn't decide if it was a war movie or a heist movie.

So the war buffs stayed away thinking it was a heist movie and vice versa.
After having actually watched it it really is a WWII movie. I was expecting them to actually attack a bank in a non war area, for example already captured Paris given the description of the movie.

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The film is too flabby with its long running time.

It's that man again!!

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