The real reason why the movie underperformed at the US box office.
It is reported that Xanadu cost $12 million and pulled in $23 million at the US box office. Normally a movie has to earn 2.5 times its cost to break even. Although the film did flop at the US domestic box office due to the fact that it was only released to 25% of the original scheduled figure of 950 theatres.
However the film performed rather well at the foreign box office. So when the totals are added together the film was a success. It just wasn't promoted correctly in the US to be a domestic box office success.
The reason for the film being poorly distributed by Universal was due to the backlash by the critics at the press screening of the movie. The blame for the backlash is due to the poor handling of the project by both the scriptwriters and the producers (particularly Joel Silver).
When Xanadu wrapped initially they didn't have 2 songs filmed ("Whenever you're away from me" and "Don't walk away"). Hurriedly Joel silver got Don Bluth to shoehorn a piece of unnecessary animation for the Don't Walk Away segment whilst Gene Kelly volunteered to direct the Whenever You're Away from Me segment. It's this oversight by Silver which probably led to there not being a proper segment for the song Magic (Part of the song is played in the background whilst Kira and Danny are skating around), this is the movie's biggest travesty as Magic is arguably the best song in the movie, even Michael Jackson told ONJ in 1980 that he thought it was the best song of that year. It was producer Joel Silver who also miscast Michael Beck (a man who can't sing or dance) as the lead in the movie.
Director Robert Greenwald was probably the innocent party in all this as he never received a proper shooting script. the scriptwriters cobbled together a 7th shooting script literally on the set day by day (the other 6 versions were rejected by the studios).
Whilst a script was being forged He had to focus on shooting some of the music segments on his own initiative and making them as extravagent as possible. This explains why some of the music pieces appear over the top such as the stupid cigarette girl dancing routine, the awful Fool-Country segment (although the "fool" part was good) and the over-eccentric Dancin' segment.
Had a proper shooting script been delivered to Greenwald prior to filming he would have been given a proper overview of the whole story. This would have helped him spread his resources throughout the whole project rather than over-focusing on the music segments which resulted in some of them appearing out of place with the rest of the picture.
Although Greenwald did make a few mistakes of his own, the video segment of Suddenly was totally out of the place with the song (the same could be said for "All over the World"). Suddenly should have been filmed as a duet mimed to each other by both Beck & ONJ as the song is quite powerful. For example of this check out the "Hollywood Nights" TV special where ONJ & Cliff Richard sing the song in her apartment. The scene is both beautiful and poignant if you could mentally substitute Cliff Richard for Beck you would have the perfect segment for the Suddenly song that didn't appear in the movie. It's a pity that Gordon Silver didn't see this TV special as they might have had a second thought about the Suddenly segment and it re-shot as a duet.
It's also a pity that ONJ didn't perform "Magic" in the "Hollywood Nights" TV special as we at least would have had a decent segment for the song which also didn't appear in the finished movie.
All in all had the Xanadu producers (Gordon & Silver) done their work correctly in the beginning the film would not have been torn asounder by critics at the press screening, and of course the film would have been properly promoted by Universal in the 950 cinemas as previously planned.
Which is a great shame as ONJ deserved better.
"Be seeing you!"
No6