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No brobdingnagian box office for this one

Kim Hollis: Gulliver's Travels has earned $27.5 million after eight days in release, and appears to be dying on the vine. Why did this $100 million production fail?

Reagen Sulewski: While I watch very little kids programming and skip through commercials on regular TV anyway, I saw not a single ad for this film. The sole mention I heard about this film coming out was the Survivor prize tie-in. Now of course it looked hideous, but even hideous films can do well if you advertise the crap out of them (i.e. Little Fockers).

Josh Spiegel: What kid knows what Gulliver's Travels is? That has been the question I'd wanted to know the answer to before this film came out, and clearly, the answer is either "Very few" or "Gulliver who?" Fox wanted this in 3D theaters, and half of the theaters where I live didn't even offer the film in the format. There were too many family films at the multiplex, and this ended up sneaking into theaters on Christmas Day, being deafened by Yogi Bear and Tron and Tangled and Harry Potter. Also, the movie apparently sucks, and some parents may not have wanted to sit through another piece of crap during the holidays.





Shalimar Sahota: Everything about this screams, "Don't watch me!" Why someone out there thought it would be a good idea to spend over $100 million on this is beyond me. Fox was probably hoping the 3D factor would be a big pull; however, there are currently five 3D films in the top ten (including this one). If the big money is being made from the likes of Tron: Legacy and Yogi Bear, then why bother showing Gulliver's Travels in the 3D screens, which might be why Josh noticed that there are hardly any theaters showing it in that format. Having unfortunately seen it (forgive me Lord, it was against my will), I found it to be absolute sacrilege and it doesn't deserve the title it's been given. As a children's film, it felt like it was pandering to the lowest of the low.

Edwin Davies: In the cinema that I manage, an ad for a popular cell phone provider has been running which features Jack Black doing a, ahem, "hilarious" bit in which he complains about being snuck into a cell phone commercial which is intended as a tie-in for Gulliver's Travels. A few weeks ago, when posters for the film started appearing everywhere, one of the staff turned to me and said, "Wait, is that a real film? I thought they just made it up for the advert." That, for me, sums up why the film has tanked. It looks like a film that someone would make up to flog cell phones, and no one wants to watch that.

David Mumpower: Remember a few years ago when Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen received several starring roles based on their lead roles in franchise films? They didn't deserve the right to anchor a movie and their track record has supported this assertion. Jack Black qualifies under this same umbrella yet he keeps getting work in mega-expensive productions. The School of Rock and Nacho Libre, $80 million hits, are about the best case scenario for him with that number bumping up into Tropic Thunder's $110 million if he's part of an ensemble cast. That is what he is, a funny man who needs to provide the comic relief rather than someone expected to carry a project. This is why I am absolutely mystified that Year One ever got off the ground, and that was only a $60 million production. Gulliver's Travels has almost double the price tag yet may not reach that movie's $43.3 million domestic. It's going to be close, anyway. All of this was avoidable if there had been more frugality shown at the start of this project. Common sense should have said that this was the likely outcome yet as is so often the case in our industry, common sense got overwhelmed by less tangible factors.

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