Delgo: the movie that took a decade to make…and a weekend to flop. Atlanta’s Fathom Studios began working on the digitally animated movie in 1999, hawking it in ‘01 with the phrase “From a studio nowhere near Hollywood…from people you’ve never heard of…comes a myth for the new millenium…Delgo.” For years, mouths watered in vain.
To get an idea of how long this took to make, the movie features the talents of such early ’00s favorites as Freddie Prinze, Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt and Chris Kattan. Anne Bancroft even provides the voice of the villain despite dying in 2005. Finally, judgement day came in over 2,000 theaters last weekend. Totally worth it, right?
Wroooooong. The movie made an average of 58 dollars a theater on its opening day, with its weekend haul totaling just over half a million. Nothing Like The Holidays made seven times as much money with four hundred fewer screens. Doubt made just over $500,000 too, despite playing on only fifteen screens—less than one percent of the number showing Delgo. Theaters showing The Adventures Of Pluto Nash in 2002 made almost four times as much money on opening weekend than those showing Delgo—and that doesn’t count for ticket price inflation.
So yeah, this bombed hardcore. There were probably more people in the credits than in seats. Shockingly, critics aren’t feeling it either. Fathom Studios basically made Jar Jar Binks: The Movie, put it in 2,000 screens and forgot to tell anyone. Smooth.
Now let us never speak of it again.
