All Hollywood stars have had some failure throughout their careers.but sometimes there have been contradictions as striking as that ‘The Mummy’ is at the same time a disaster that destroyed the Dark Universe and one of the highest grossing films of Tom Cruise. Today we have to focus on another quite particular case, that of ‘The Adventures of Doctor Dolittle’.
Based on the character created by Hugh Lofting which had already been taken to the big screen on several occasions, ‘The Adventures of Doctor Dolittle’ seemed to have everything to be a box office hit. After all, it was the first film starring Robert Downey Jr. after that milestone that was ‘Avengers: Endgame’, but the problems came long before its theatrical release.
an inevitable disaster
‘The Adventures of Doctor Dolittle’ was always intended to be a movie, but the test screenings were so disastrous that a large additional investment had to be made to re-record scenes that shot the budget up to 175 million dollarsto which must be added the heavy cost of the promotional campaign and other additional expenses.
That led to an estimate that it had to raise at least $500 million to start turning a profit. It didn’t help that it was trashed by critics, but audiences weren’t particularly pleased either, which translated into a worldwide revenue of $251 million. A little less than half of what is necessaryso that the losses shot up to close to 100 million.
The curious thing is that those 251 million admitted were enough for ‘The Adventures of Doctor Dolittle’ to be the seventh highest-grossing film of 2020. Of course, that year was marked forever with the coronavirus and the barrage of delays, since in a normal year he would not even have come close to that position. To put it in perspective, that amount would have allowed it to reach 35th place the previous year, just behind “X-Men: Dark Phoenix,” which was also a box office catastrophe.
It is true that it could have added a little more without the closure of the cinemas, but also that ‘The Adventures of Doctor Dolittle’ it had practically disappeared from them by the time that happened. To understand it better, on the weekend of March 6-8, she had only made $351,000.
In addition, an article in The Hollywood Reporter published shortly after its release revealed the chaos behind the scenes prior to its premiere. Let’s not forget that it was originally scheduled to be released in May 2019, but since no one seemed to be happy with the film, it had to be heavily reworked, with an inside source noting that “there were too many cooks in the kitchen“.
The result was a disaster on all levels that was also recognized with six Razzie nominations, taking home the award for worst remake or sequel of the year. It was his greatest triumph.
‘The adventures of Doctor Dolittle’ is broadcast tonight on Cuatro at 22:15