September 3rd, 2012
02:43 PM ET
'Oogieloves' sets wrong kind of box office recordAs the summer movie season draws to a close, we've got box office champions like "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises" ... and then we've got question marks like "The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure." The newly released kids film, which features giant "Teletubbies"-esque creatures along with stars like Jaime Pressly, Cloris Leachman and Toni Braxton, has set the bar for low performance having earned just $674,000 since it opened last Wednesday.
The film even earned the title of the worst opening weekend of all time for a wide release arriving in 2,000-plus theaters, pulling in just $448,000 in its first three days, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. Created by Kenn Viselman, the same fellow who introduced the Teletubbies to the U.S., the Oogieloves are happy-go-lucky characters - with names such as Zoozie, Toofie and Goobie - who are meant to be an upbeat counterpoint to what Viselman sees as darker themes in popular kids films from Pixar, he told the Los Angeles Times. "Why can't we have something that's all love, where we don't even have the color black?" Viselman inquired during the interview. "Pixar always has the triumph of good over evil. But why does there have to be evil in the first place?" While the obvious answer might be because that's what's drawn in audiences, among other things, Viselman insists that a profit wasn't his point anyway. The film, which cost a reported $20 million to produce and another $40 million to market, employs an interactive element that encourages kids to sing and dance along in an effort to let "kids ... be free." "Look, it hurts your ego when you're one of the worst openings in history or whatever it is," Viselman told the L.A. Times. "But this was never about box office - it was about creating entertainment kids could love."
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I kept reading this thinking that it failed because there was no marketing- and then it says that they spent $40 million on marketing?? I've never heard of this movie until just now. I've never read an ad, seen a commercial, seen interviews with the people behind it- none of that. I have a kid I might have taken to this if I'd heard about it. What the heck kind of marketing could they have done?
spiderman on broadway for my cousins twins..not this crapy
show looks like total bore
THis was all about getting kids to watch and gage a potential tv series.. I hope it is not on PBS anytime soon
Just like the Teletubbies, this is CREEPY, and I would NEVER take any child to see it. I think it would give them "Pink Elephants on Parade" nightmares!!
i was going to bring my cousins 5 year old twins...its looks boring..i think i'll take them to see spiderman
on broadway, since they love spiderman
My grand daughter, who turned 3 on Wednesday, is so anxious to see this movie. She wants to take her cousin so there are 3-4 of us planning on going who haven't gone yet. I don't know what it is about the trailer but my grand daughter just goes nuts when she sees those characters!
Do you know i have blogg control over the 4 clowns in that picture.
i'm so powerful arent' i–i really am a true JR Ewing
BAAWAAHAA
need cvr while gtg fcl. thanks
We had a Dwarf work for us at Rockledge Builders
henry Kravis is a Dwarf!
Billy Barty was tiny yet a person.
how did this movie cost 20 mil to make with Toni Braxton and Jaime Presley in it!
Bad show all around.
they have a ceo that will be sitting in the audience...who cares.
they have a ceo that will be seeing the audience...the completed production doesn't care
While I applaud the creator's thought of there just being a happy kids movie to go see...BUT what draws people in to a story (even little people) is conflict. It is resolution of conflict which keeps people watching and makes a movie "good". Conflict in general is not a happy go lucky thing.
well she has a wonderful fan base...so therefore the show will go on–all of you can stay home...nobody cares
There was a large fan base for the show BEDBUGS where these characters were created. They were bought out and the costumes altered. There has been poor promotion and poor acting on the characters part to support a nationwide movie. Plus without naming them, some of the human actors are more associated with adult humor and I would not take my child to a movie she is in.
Still better than Gigli
How could anyone expect this to do anything but tank? It's like this century's version of Lidsville without being good.
what a boring insecure person
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I've never even heard of this movie so it's no wonder it was the worst opening ever. It doesn't even look like something I would take my kids to
Kenn Viselman didn't "create" this. This was based on a kids show of out Michigan called MY BEDBUGS.
omg so i just looked up this movie . umm teletubbies r way better . this movie looks scary my chihuahua didnt like these images of these characters he scared . jijijiji
i never even saw a preview to this movie .
This is making "Shark Boy And Lava Girl" look like Oscar material.
Does anybody really consider Pressly, Leachman, and Braxton to be "stars" at this point?
i could really something about these 4 also...but i won't
If there's no pre-existing fan base for a kid's movie, then why would you expect parents to take their kids to it? The teletubbies could've had a bigger box office draw than this movie. Why were expectations so high?
I'm nor surprised! This movie looked really low budget and I never understood how it got made in the first place!