Donnie Darko

I picked this up today fairly cheap on Blu-ray today, and got curious about how much this weird movie made when it was released. Wikipedia states that it cost $4.5 million to make, and only grossed $4.1 million worldwide, at least until the 2 disk edition in 2004. This is one of those movies that I liked better the second time I saw it (renting the 2004 version). Hope I like it 3rd time around on Blu-ray! To think some very crappy movies have made 50 to 100 TIMES this amount of money. Amazing.

"Donnie darko" is one of those movies that home video made into cult hits. Much like "fight club", this movie sold crazy on DVD. I watched it twice, and although i found it extremely atmospheric and arousing at certain moments, i failed to understand what that movie was about. It just gave me the impression of puzzle pieces made out of "cool and weird ideas", glued together into one indescribable picture.

I remember reading how critics in cannes were eagerly waiting for Richard kelly's next movie, "Southland tales", and the sheer disappointment and acid criticism that followed. Apparently it got him back into the editing room "fixing" it, with obvious results.

I do understand what you mean when you say "other crappier movies made more", and i don't believe that box office always reflects the quality of the film, but in this case, i think the film was very inaccessible on every level. Even cerebral masturbation has a limit.

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[Post edited by S_Coaster on Feb 15, 2009 - CST 5:07 PM]

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Wikipedia states that it cost $4.5 million to make, and only grossed $4.1 million worldwide

Actually this is not bad for an indie film. Especially when you consider it probably had no marketing budget what so ever. It's a dream of most indie filmmakers to make back the budget of the film. Most can take 10 years to make back their budget on DVD, if ever.

The only reason mainstream movies make loads of money good or bad is that they are marketed to death. We are inundated with trailers on TV, ads in newspapers and on billboards and bus stops, etc, etc. I try to be on the ball about watching for upcoming indie films and yet I still usually miss their tiny theatrical run because there is zero advertising and unless you happen to walk by the one theatre in town that's showing it during it's one week run, you would never know it was in theatres.

I know a few indie filmmakers here in Toronto who have tried to self-promote their films, but it's next to impossible to get any recognition without millions to spend on advertising. The average big Hollywood movie spends about $500,000 just on ad fees (not including design) for newspapers in the city of Toronto alone. I can't even imagine how much they are spending in New York or LA. And that's just newspapers. Running trailers on TV costs many, many more times that. Not to mention billboards, buses, and other things. It's even getting more and more common for me to walk into washroom at a bar or club and see movie trailers playing on a little LCD screen above each urinal. All of this costs horrendous amounts of money.

Indie films just can't compete unless they get picked up by a big distributor or studio. Even then they are usually ignored and although released there is still virtually no advertising. It's really a sell-fulfilling prophesy: indie films will not make money so we wont spend money advertising them, but they don't make money because we don't advertise them.

Donnie Darko probably had a lot of advertising for an indie film and that's why it made back it's budget in the theatres. But by 'a lot' I mean relative to other indie films. If it had had the adjertising budget of a typical Hollywood movie it probably would have made the same amount of money as a typical Hollywood movie.

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[Post edited by the_dvd_chef on Feb 15, 2009 - CST 5:06 PM]

Box Office Mojo says much different:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=donniedarko.htm

They say it was a budget of 6-million and a total gross of 1.3 million . . . and Box Office Mojo is never wrong. Again, I wouldn't trust info from Wikipedia if my life depended on it.

If you take a moment to look closely at your link you will see that Box Office Mojo only lists the domestic US gross as part of the total and has n/a under foreign despite the fact that the film was released overseas.

And the discrepancy in the budget might be due to estimated budget (what all expenditures and labour should be worth, and therefore the films value) vs. actual budget (what was actually spent after discounts and possibly volunteer crew, etc.). On the other hand Box Office Mojo may just be wrong about that too.

I love the fact that you trash Wikipedia despite the fact that it clearly lists where the info comes from, and yet you have an unwavering belief in an amateurish looking site that says nothing about where is gets it's information.

Here are some better numbers:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/business

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[Post edited by the_dvd_chef on Feb 15, 2009 - CST 5:28 PM]

Ha, ha, apparently this film translates well into Italian, because it grossed many times more in Italy than anywhere else.

What's funny, Chef, is it's difficult to find any accuracy on any given site. Even IMDB says 4.5 mill "estimated" -- which is basically saying it's a close guess considering what facts they could find. I think the difference is BOM takes marketing expenses into consideration, thus the reason they're saying 6-mill on production costs. Nevertheless, I'm not the expert on this, as it's more Eddie's field. That guy is a master on knowing how it all pans out.

The Italians are pretty F'ed up Chef.

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The Italians are pretty F'ed up Chef.

Well, they make good food. They can't be all that F'ed up. Besides, John is Italian and I know for a fact that he's not F'ed up.

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To think some very crappy movies have made 50 to 100 TIMES this amount of money. Amazing.

I should probably watch the movie before I post, but I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here.. I thought DD was a really fun movie, a bit dark, a bit out there..I agree that it wasn't extremely coherent but still fun and exotic..that being said to think that BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA grossed (according to box office mojo, and who really gives a shit about box office results anyways (tim / chef) $131,608,309 and Donnie Darko couldn't make its budget..Amazing indeed.

Uni