If a filmmaker is going to try and hit one out of the park, sometimes they’re bound to strike out, and when it comes to delivering unique VFX dramas, Robert Zemeckis doesn’t shortchange ambition whether it’s a jawdropping re-creation of the World Trade Center circa 1974 in his 2015 misfire The Walk or rolling the dice and proving that there’s an everyman drama in an obscure Zelig-like concept like Forrest Gump, which doubled as the director’s best picture Oscar winner and $678M-grossing blockbuster.
Zemeckis’ latest Universal/DreamWorks production Welcome to Marwen was an attempt to adapt the moving 2010 documentary Marwencol about Mark Hogancamp, who after being brutally attacked, heals his PTSD through art therapy constructing miniature WWII scenes of mostly female dolls. The trailer, with its story of a guy who becomes consumed in a doll world, pitched a similar type of heart-string pull as Forrest Gump.
Audiences didn’t buy it spending only $2.3M at 1,911 theaters stateside with God-awful exit scores of two stars, 57% positive and a 37% definite recommend on PostTrak with a B- on CinemaScore. Ahead of Marwen‘s release, social media monitor RelishMix noticed a mixed reaction online among moviegoers with some people turned off by the protagonist’s fetish for wearing women’s high heels. For both Zemeckis and leading man Steve Carell, Marwen is their lowest wide release opening of all-time at the domestic box office.
But before audiences rejected Marwen, the awards press did after seeing a cut in mid-November. And if that Illuminati flat-out flunked this movie, then this type of drama is as good as dead commercially at this point in awards season. Rotten Tomatoes was extremely low at 27% Rotten with Joel Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal ranting that Marwen was “mind-numbingly immense, joylessly violent, and utterly lifeless…You’ve got to see it to believe it, though I wouldn’t advise doing so.” A year ago, the awards press was wishy-washy about Greatest Showman, but that movie (yes, completely different from Marwen) won over the masses since it was an anthem-fueled musical starring Hugh Jackman.
Thus, the industry debate continues whether an off-beat film such as Marwen is better suited as an in-home streaming experience or theatrical. Clearly, a big screen release was intended here. Deadline’s film finance sources project around a $60M loss for Marwen, after a $40M-$50M production cost and a global P&A of around $60M. Our sources with knowledge of the budget say that originally a $120M P&A was considered for the film during development, however, Uni cut that down significantly after they learned the pic was spoiled goods. DreamWorks sold down pro-rata with Universal to a 40% exposure with Perfect World providing additional financing due to its slate deal with the latter studio.
Marwen had an original release date of Nov. 21 and was then pushed a month to this past weekend as Universal prioritized Green Book for awards season, launching the Peter Farrelly-directed movie at TIFF where it won the fest’s top prize, the Grosch People’s Choice Award. We also heard Marwen jumped to this weekend as further VFX work was required. Again, if a studio has a bomb on their hands, there’s no better time to release it then at Christmas when a pic’s multiple can be 8x or more. Our finance sources see an estimated global film rental that’s less than $20M, with global ancillaries (global TV, home entertainment, free TV, SVOD) projected to bring in less than a combined $35M. Pin Marwen as another challenging high concept film that was a marketing nightmare (gosh, that title alone will keep people from coming in), not unlike Uni/Media Rights Capital’s sci-fi bomb from last weekend, Mortal Engines, which is set to lose well north of $105M.
Despite an awful December, Universal can take solace in being third at the domestic 2018 box office currently with $1.74 billion coming off of such hits as Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($416.7M), The Grinch ($254M), Halloween which was co-financed by Blumhouse and Miramax ($159.3M), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again ($120.6M), and Fifty Shades Freed ($100.4M).
