I've been reading about the struggles at the box office; overall, the revenue for the movies has been dropping from week to week. Let's forget for a second that ticket prices for everything except certain afternoon and early evening showings have skyrocketed, artificially inflating profits, and talk about the real problem; the quality of the films and the way they're rotated in and out of theaters--as it regards KC in particular.
Let's recall KC's rise to stardom in The Untouchables. Folks, that movie made $76 million in the United States (That's from the Internet Movie Database). In fact, KC's "hot streak" (1987-92) included only three films (out of eight he made) that crossed the $100 million mark in the United States: Dances With Wolves, Robin Hood and The Bodyguard, and of those three, Dances With Wolves never hit #1 in a single weekend. That suggests different rules were at work in the late 80s and early 90s; an element called "word of mouth." That's how The Untouchables and No Way Out became recognized as good movies, and how Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and Dances became immortals. Those films stayed in the theater for months.
For all the criticisms of KC, he was never one of the $100 million dollar babies in cinema; throughout his career, it's been the exception for him rather than the rule.
DVDs have replaced those long stays in the theater, and if that's the case, they should factor into the overall official tabulation of "box office." If that's the case, every movie KC has made has made a profit except for The Postman and 3,000 Miles to Graceland." Instead of going to the theaters, the people who would otherwise have seen movies like "Thirteen Days" and "Open Range" in theaters have been renting them or buying them in DVD form.
But the best experience of watching a movie (certainly true of a western with great vistas, like Open Range) is still in the theater. If ever there was a movie that should have been able to linger in the theater from word of mouth (which was there), that one was it. The same is true of The Upside of Anger. Instead, Disney and New Line just left them in wide release long enough to make profits, then yanked them for the high-octane fare, which, surprise, surprise, suddenly isn't giving those studios the same bang for their bucks as OR and TUOA did. That's bad business, folks; taking out two high-quality movies to put in junk.
These days, very few quality movies get a chance to latch onto word of mouth and linger in theaters, unless there are big stars with proven $100 million track records (Sandra Bullock is in Crash, which has been successful this year), or big producers (Tom Hanks and his wife produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding) are involved. Since KC doesn't have that $100 million string, he won't get that chance. But as we see from his career, studios aren't looking at the whole picture with him.
