tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Is today's business of making movies really going through very rough times? In the case of Fox Searchlight, it seems 2009 is their year of 'financial reckoning'.

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Come to think of it, the studio was the best performer last year - Take a look: Fox Searchlight's Slumdog Millionaire won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 81st Academy Awards as well as a further 7 academy awards. Other Fox Searchlight films receiving Best Picture nominations include The Full Monty, Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine and Juno.

More about the studio's line up of movies for 2009 and some Box Office reports after the jump!
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Just take a look at this January 2009 report from Reuters:

Independent film label Fox Searchlight Pictures racked up more awards than any other movie studio at the Golden Globes on Sunday thanks to big wins for "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Wrestler." The six awards for the studio, which is a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, will be key to boosting Searchlight's movie ticket sales in the weeks leading up to Hollywood's biggest event, the Oscars, next month. "Slumdog Millionaire," a rags-to-riches tale about a young Indian man who competes on a TV game show, has raked in nearly $38 million worldwide to date, mostly in the United States. The movie was the night's big winner with four awards. Fox Searchlight's "The Wrestler," which has been released in just a handful of U.S. theaters so far, has brought in $2.8 million. The movie about a fallen wrestler earned best actor honors for Mickey Rourke in the starring role and a best original song award for rocker Bruce Springsteen. Time Warner Inc unit Warner Bros received five awards, the night's second biggest number for a studio. [ read more ]

This year's line-up of films including Whip it!, Notorious, Miss March, Amelia, 500 Days of Summer, Adam and Post Grad (with 20th Century Fox and co-production with The Montecito Picture Company and Cold Spring Pictures) are nowhere near last year's hits. Except for 500 Days of Summer and Notorious and possibly The Fantastic Mr. Fox, all of these films bombed at the Box Office.

Now that the financial picture looks ridiculously bad, they've decided to fold Gentlemens Broncos. The Jared Hess movie, starring Jemaine Clement, Michael Angarano, Jennifer Coolidge, among others, is not performing as expected. In fact, it's not performing at all.

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Cineman Blend commented that:

It doesn't work so well when your movie is a stinker, which is exactly what Fox Searchlight seems to have learned with Gentlemen Broncos. It opened in two theaters last weekend and earned a merely-OK $5,751 per-theater average. But with the reviews scathing and a wider release unlikely to bring in new fans, Searchlight has apparently decided to cut their losses and give up on bringing the film beyond New York and L.A. Roger Ebert said on his Twitter feed that the Chicago release has been cancelled, and similar notices are apparently coming in for critics in markets like Denver and Phoenix. [ read more ]

The popular movie news site also posted this announcement: "Unfortunately GENTLEMEN BRONCOS will not be opening in any additional markets after Friday, November 6th. All screenings, etc. have been cancelled please do not include film in your calendars or reviews. Thank you."

All I can say is: No more Broncos... I won't be seeing Michael Angarano!

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What's on your mind? Have you heard of Gentlemen Broncos and is interested in watching the film? Have you seen the other films of Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre)? Are you a Michael Angarano fan? Let us know what you think!
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