This film only made 6,000,000 at the international box office. Why did it perform so poorly? I mean it had a pretty stellar cast; Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts, etc, etc. Was it only released theatrically on a very small scale or something?
share[deleted]
Well, Too Hands was excellently made. So perhaps Jordon is (was?) better suited to smaller stories at that time. However I would say that countless greater films have failed at the Box Office for no reason other than the viewing public just weren't interested. Unlike the act of watching DVDs, going to the Movies is almost always a social act. Therefore, it is the crowd pleasing films that generally get the most attention.
I can easily see that, starpower and matters of quality aside, a film about an unknown colonial Australian bushranger would have been barely a blip on the radar of most overseas film goers. No offence but most people know hardly anything substantial about their own nation's history, let alone a country on the other side of the world, better known for its flora and fauna than its rich history.
However, I was happy to see the Ned Kelly and Glenrowan seige reference in The Devil's Rejects. I tried to submit that connection here but IMDB refused it. It's pretty damn obvious though.
[deleted]
I was surprised to see the film had such a large budget for an Australian movie. At $30 million, it had to be a resounding success in (particularly) North America to even approach getting a return on it's outlays. Traditionally that audience doesn't react well to non-American accents, especially when they are fairly thick Irish ones.
Pity! I thought it was a reasonably good film with great cinematography and an interesting story.🐭