What it means for a film director to have a resounding failure at the box office

October, 03; 2024. By Arscodex

Megalopolis still

Today we are going to discuss a fact that, depending on the context and the place, among other variables, can mean bad news for a film director; it is about having a resounding failure at the box office as Francis Ford Coppola has recently had with his Megalopolis or Fernando Trueba with his Haunted Heart.

In short, it is never nice, as we say, to know that only a few people have gone to see your film, but in the long term the matter could have different interpretations, especially knowing that in cinema 2 + 2 does not equal 4 in most cases, and that is what is interesting about it, among other things.

Box office failure depends above all on three axioms: the state of the director's career (if he is a new or established); the type of film (if it is an auteur film or intended for the masses), and some other more secondary considerations, such as the film's budget and things like that.

So let's break down these three main points: If the director is established, a box office failure is a whim, a loose verse, a bohemian proposal for the person in charge of making the film, as is the case of Francis Ford Coppola, Fernando Trueba, and also, to give another example, Pedro Almodóvar, since his films have not been doing very well at the box office lately.

If the director is new, this could mean that he/she will not direct films again.

If the film is aimed at the masses and is an entertainment product, things also look bad, because it does not fulfill its main objective. However, if the film is "auteur", as we have already said here, then it can even be bohemian, as we have also noted, the fact that the film in question is a resounding failure at the box office.

If one has spent a fortune to produce that film, as is the case of Francis Ford Coppola with his Megalopolis (120 million dollars has cost according to the producer's statement), and even the opposite: if the film has no budget or this is symbolic and has not even been released in theaters (as is the case of the eight feature films so far by the author, Pedro Alonso Pablos), this could mean such a big disturbance that it would reach the category of "cinematic poetry."

For cinema as art, however, as we have already commented on other occasions in this medium, neither the budget of a film nor the box office takings are important or determining, since a film can fall into one of these two characteristics and be a "masterpiece" or an "unwatchable piece of crap."

So, except for the first-time director, who might be forced to not direct any more films, in all other cases both the box office takings and the budget of the film are more of an accident than something categorical and relevant or important for that particular film.

Featured links in People

Francis Ford Coppola