In a year that saw record-breaking box office ticket sales for movies like the "The Hobbit," Christian Slater is Hollywood's biggest loser. The actor's turn as a crooked small-town cop in the indie horror flick "Playback" was the lowest grossing film of 2012, according to Movieline.
Reportedly costing about $7.5 million to produce, "Playback" took in $252 on its opening night, and earned just another $12 later in that week before being pulled from theaters altogether, making its grand total $264. The horror film showed for one week -March 16 - 22 - at one movie theater, according to the Huffington Post. Calculations from The Daily Mail show that approximately 33 people bought tickets to the movie to reach this total.
In case you weren't among those 33 souls brave enough to see "Playback," the studio describes it thusly: "After digging into the infamous history of their town, a group of high school students inadvertently unlock an evil that possesses and destroys them. The evil takes control of victims through video playback and uses them for wishing harm on others. The evil closes in on one person, threatening to expose the deepest secrets of the town of Marshall, Michigan."
That plot and "Slater smirk"? How did that not spell box off magic?
Of course, while "Playback" has the dubious honor of "lowest grossing film of 2012," to be fair, the movie was only released in that one theater. Much worse in 2012 were movies that received wide releases and bombed anyways, such as "The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure." That film now holds the record as the lowest-grossing wide release of all time, according to The Huffington Post. "Oogieloves" earned a $1.1 million gross, says The Numbers, averaging just $207 per theater (it opened in 2,160 theaters originally), paltry returns by Hollywood standards.
Other duds included Tyler Perry's critically panned "Alex Cross" adaptation, which made $10 million less than its budget, and Gerard Butler's surfing flick "Chasing Mavericks," which only saw a total gross of just $5 million.
While "Playback" may have been the lowest grossing film of 2012, it still made more money than the lowest earning movie of all time; a distinction that somewhat fittingly belongs to America's fill-in-the-blank Mad Lib romantic comedy sweetheart Katherine Heigl. The actress' 2006 movie, "Zyzzyx Road" showed in just one theater in Dallas, Tex. for seven days. The $750,000 budgeted film took in only $30, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Slater's upcoming projects include a role in "The Power of Few" with Christopher Walken, and a part in the provocateur Lars Von Trier's new film "Nymphomaniac" with Shia LaBeouf.
If you'd like to be the 34th person to watch "Playback," the film was released on DVD in the U.S. on May 8 and is available on movie streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
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