$1,900,000 budget a lot for 56"? Made only 1M profit
For a well-praised classic, it didn't make a great profit.
Trivia: first it says it's success made more sci-fi films possible, then says later the film was dismal profit
According to the Wikipedia article on the film, it cost $1,968,000 to make and in its first run brought in box office rentals in the US and Canada of $2,765,000.
Despite appearances, however, the studio's records show the film lost $210,000. This may in part be the usual "Hollywood accounting" but a film's production costs do not include things like print costs, promotion, distribution costs and so on. The other issue is that MGM didn't take the film seriously and didn't promote it the way they did their more "serious" or prestigious productions.
I had always heard it initially lost money, though eventually it became profitable.
One problem is that its budget was high for a sci-fi film of that era, one of the highest if not the highest cost of any sf film of the 50s. Since science fiction had a somewhat limited market back then (it was not considered a "respectable" genre by many), the higher the production costs, the less room for profit.
In terms of film budgets of the time $1.9 million was about in the middle range. By way of comparison, here are two contemporary films, both Oscar winners for Best Picture, of very different budgets and box office:
Marty (1955) cost just $350,000 to make and grossed $3,500,000, ten times its production cost.
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) cost $6,000,000 to produce and took in $42,000,000, seven times its production cost.
Clearly both films turned a profit. (Hecht-Lancaster, which made Marty, expected it to lose money and only made it as a tax write-off, which they didn't get!) These films more or less represent the extreme ranges of mainstream film costs in the mid-50s.
Now compare the costs/box office of Forbidden Planet with those of two early 50s sci-fi films and their returns:
Destination Moon cost $550,000 to make and took in $5,500,000, ten times its cost.
The Man From Planet X (1951) cost only $41,000 and grossed $1,000,000, almost 24 times its cost.
You can see the difference in profit margins as a factor of cost.
As to Forbidden Planet's effect on other sci-fi films, anyone who says it made future sci-fi films "possible" is being ridiculous. Such films were popular and profitable, provided one didn't spend as much as they did on FP...which may have been the lesson other producers learned from the film. Certainly no other sci-fi movie of that budget was made for the rest of the 50s and into the 60s.
Hobnob53,
Thank you for putting that information together and posting it. I find it somewhat fascinating.
The most interesting to me is the gulf between the initial box office take of FP verses that of somewhat contemporary films. One wonders what might have been with different marketing and a different attitude from the studio.
"Morbius, something is approaching from the southwest. It is now quite close."
Only somewhat fascinating?!
I agree with you, Harold. Dore Schary, the somewhat (that seems to be today's word here!) pretentious CEO of MGM at the time, dismissed sci-fi pictures as beneath him and basically green-lighted Forbidden Planet only because the genre had proven profitable at other studios. Even so, it was not a Metro priority. Only the fact that the studio as a matter of pride routinely turned out glossy films with good production values saved FP from becoming a slap-dash film.
But Schary still put more stock in his "prestige" films than a sci-fi opus, even though it was Metro's first-ever sci-fi film, and more or less let the film find its own way into the world. I don't mean to say the studio didn't advertise it, but compared to "bigger" productions they treated it as a film of no real importance. I'm sure if they had spent an extra $100,000, or even $50,000, in promoting it they could have earned a few hundred thousand more and broken even or made a small profit. Though as I said, eventually the film did make money, with re-releases, TV showings and later home video.
Significantly, it was only after Schary was kicked out later in 1956 that MGM eventually began making some other science fiction films, notably The Time Machine in 1960 and, much later, 2001 in 1968.
Frankly, it makes no sense to me that a studio would spend money making a film and then just dump it without even trying to make some money off of it, but that wasn't unusual in the heyday of the majors.
I think you'd find Time Machine and 2001 both Brit films distributed by MGM.
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Guacamole in my choos
The Time Machine is not a British film. It was shot entirely in Hollywood on the MGM sound stages. It was produced by George Pal's company Galaxy Pictures but is considered an MGM film, and in any case it's strictly an American movie.
MGM distributed 2001 but also helped finance it. That film too was made at their (British) studios. I would not call 2001 a "British" film, but more properly an Anglo-American one if necessary.
"Certainly no other sci-fi movie of that budget was made for the rest of the 50s and into the 60s."
Hi - don't forget 2001 which was initially a financial disaster until discovered by the trippy generation. It went $4.5m over budget to $10m. That was a huge sum for the mid 60's when production began.
Now we can talk about FP as we're on the right forum.
Yes, that's why I wrote "into the 60s." 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968. Of course, as you say production began earlier (1965 in fact), but until that film, meaning well into the 60s, I don't think any other sci-fi film was as costly as Forbidden Planet. And you're right, 2001's ultimate cost was huge for any type of film in the late 60s.
Now we can talk about FP as we're on the right forum.
Indeed. Yay! Hector was becoming threatening. share
If you mean the psychotic Hector Saturn 5 is to science fiction what the new FIFA film is to football.
Actually we've all been a bit mean and not mentioned the 1955 classic This Island Earth. A budget of 800k was still pretty big and despite some wooden acting I loved the story and special effects
Funny, when I first came onto this thread This Island Earth crossed my mind, because if memory serves I believe studio publicity claimed it cost $2,000,000...which frankly just doesn't show on the screen by a long shot.
But it was still a big-budget sci-fi film for a medium-budget studio like Universal. The fact that they sprung for color (their only color sci-fi film of the decade) showed they thought more of it than most of their other genre outings. While it could have used a better leading man and Jack Arnold should have directed it (he did direct portions of it, uncredited), the film actually has some ideas to it and is generally well-made, and Jeff Morrow, never a great actor, delivers the finest performance of his career as Exeter. That flying saucer was modeled on a photo of an alleged saucer seen (I forget where) a couple of years earlier, which had been widely published around the world. I recognized it at once when I was a kid. It was pretty cool-looking.
To this day many film historians call TIE "the quintessential science fiction film of the 50s". Maybe, but no one puts it ahead of Forbidden Planet. Although FP was not the first sci-fi film shot in CinemaScope. Know what was?
Thanks for the information of TIE. I remember one review describing Jeff Morrow's performance a 'pure plastic' but it suits the film.
A pity the great Jack Arnold didn't direct all of it. To me it has everything a space opera should have with the disintegrating planet a real tour de force of effects. A model maker's dream.
Well as far as the first Sc-fi film shot in CinemaScope - hmmm - Without cheating 'Them' (with a young leonard Nimoy)? Probably one of the cheaper 'B' movies though.
Jack Arnold didn't direct because the rights to the novel had been bought by the director, Joseph Newman. I think Arnold handled some of the Metaluna scenes, but would have to check that again.
Well, the first CinemaScope sci-fi film was World Without End (1956), released through Allied Artists. It's a time-travel drama and one of my favorites. Medium budget but very entertaining despite a couple of dicey effects sequences. Interestingly, the idea for Forbidden Planet was initially pitched to AA but at some point Metro heard about it and bought the project as their first sci-fi film.
Them! was never to have been filmed in 'Scope but it was originally supposed to have been in 3-D and color. Two days before shooting began Warner revised the budget downward and scrapped both the color and 3-D, which was beginning to fade as a fad. The switch to b&w was a huge improvement in that it made the ants look much more realistic and added to the noir-ish approach of the film. Although ultimately not shot in 3-D, many of the movie's scenes were blocked for the process and were filmed as originally planned, so there's something of a 3-D look to some of the film.
I'll have to lookup 'World Without End' this is where YouTube is at its best as it usually possible to find most 50's Sc-Fi on it.
You're right about 'Them' colour wouldn't have suited it and you are correct about certain scenes being filmed as though they were for a 3D production.
Jack Arnold was a really good director with one of my favourites 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' amongst his credits.
Let me know what you think about it if you find WWE.
Them! leading lady Joan Weldon said the giant ants were very pretty -- all purple and green! But I think that would not have been conveyed too well on screen in color. For years, in watching Them! I always thought the title looked like it had been in color (you can usually tell when something being shown in black & white was actually shot in color), but it wasn't until the early 90s that the original print was made available to television and home video, showing that the title had indeed been in color -- the only remnant of the color initially planned for the film. (In preparing 16mm prints for television they never bothered to go to the trouble and expense of printing brief color sequences in otherwise b&w films in color.) The letters also have a plain 3-D look, also a remnant of how the movie was originally to have been filmed.
I like Jack Arnold too. My favorite of his films was the Them!-inspired Tarantula, generally considered the second-best giant insect film of the 50s. The same trained tarantula used two years later in The Incredible Shrinking Man, by the way.
I didn't know you could 'train' a Tarantula but I'll take you word for it lol. I hope the arachnid got a pay rise for its second feature and a mega one for its appearance in 'Dr No'
'Them' was a very well produced film with the actors taking it seriously. It's good to see the lead - James Whitmore - was working right up to 2007.
Just watched the original trailer - it must have thrilled 50's audiences.
Oh, yes, "star" insects and other animals were owned and trained by professional animal handlers. For example, they got the spider to move by blowing jets of air at it so he'd go where they wanted him to. I tried to find out the tarantula's name on Wikipedia but it wasn't mentioned. At the moment I'm not where I have a reference book that might contain the information but will check it in a couple of days. I'm sure you were joking but while I don't think it was the same tarantula in Dr. No it's actually possible it was!
However, in looking the tarantula up I did run across an entry for the cat who played "Butch" in The Incredible Shrinking Man. It turns out this tabby (usually called "Orangey" but also known by a couple of other names) was a very famous feline who appeared in a number of movies and TV shows in the 50s and 60s. He's the only cat ever to win two PATSY awards (the animal equivalent of the Oscar) for his performances, the first in 1951 as the title feline in Rhubarb and the second in 1961 as Cat in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And -- get this -- he played Neutron in This Island Earth! I guess in that one he got blown up with everyone else in the house when the Metalunans destroyed it while eliminating all traces of their presence before flying back home.
Since Forbidden Planet would have needed an animal trainer for the tiger and deer, I wonder if they also employed him as a consultant for the monster from the id?!
Yes, the Them! trailer is cool:
Terror!
Horror!
Excitement
Mystery!
No animal trainers needed for Them!, of course. Just mechanics.
How interesting. the Tabby must have been a real star and I like the way he was called Neutron in 'This Island Earth'
Clearly in the 1950's particle physics was really exciting and naming a cat after a particle gave an air of futurism to any film.
It's interesting to note that many of the 50's classic space exploration Sci-Fi films could have featured computer graphic displays instead of flashing lights but I guess that imaginations weren't that advanced. In 'The Fly' they did have lights that formed a pattern so at least someone had the foresight as to where computers were heading.
A computer graphics game of Tic Tac Toe (Noughts and crosses) was developed in the mid 1950's and is available on YouTube. However if you want to see some real insight into the future watch Walt Diseny's 'Trip Aoud the Moon' from 1955.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjs3nBfyIwM Per 1 of 4. There's also some dainty computer graphics or t least some dainty animation that looks like graphics.
If you remember they called the cat in This Island Earth "Neutron" because he's always so positive. That's the sum total of our particle physics education for the day!
I really doubt they could have used much in the way of computer graphics in films of the 50s. They didn't do a lot of that even in the 60s. Building the equipment they used must obviously have been cheaper and easier, or maybe even more convincing. I don't know. The outer space sequences in Forbidden Planet look amazingly real even today. But I'll have a look at the link you provided. Sounds interesting.
No I actually don't know of any film that used them as my first introduction to graphics (although they were all drawn by hand as computers of the day weren't fast enough) was 2001.
However Disney - who assisted with the development of CAD - certainly did their best to envisage what a futuristic information display would look like in the link I gave you.
The effects in Forbidden Planet still hold up and not surprisingly they borrowed some animators from Disney.
In terms of date order the first film produced with real CGI displays that I know of was 'Brainstorm' from 1965 starring a certain Jeffrey Hunter and Anne Francis. However 1963's Dr Strangelove did have huge displays tracking the paths of the Jets.
There is a posting on YouTube from a TV show broadcast around 1955 of an astonished looking general watching a computer plot the hypothetical trajectory of a missile using graphics.
Actually, the effects sequences in Forbidden Planet that hold up best are the ones showing the ship in space (the background stars are very realistic), but even more so the shot of the ship moving away in front of Altair, and the scene of the ship in orbit around Altair-4 as it closes in to land, where they even show the planet rotating. Some of the Disney or other cartoon-like illustrations aren't as good.
I haven't seen Brainstorm in years and don't recall any CGI stuff there. Were the jet paths in Strangelove really proto-CGI? They had a similar effect in Fail-Safe. But I'm sure they could have done those electronically, without computers. Not saying that's what they were, but I'm not sure what form this early CGI really took.
Here's a picture from Brainstorm showing the graphic display. I think they may have used the Sketchpad computer developed by Ivan Sutherland in 1962
Film
https://monstergirl.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/brainstorm-lobby-2.jpg?w=490&h=395
Actual Sketchpad
http://www.bloomberg.com/ss/08/10/1006_ceo_guide/image/ivanssketchpad600gimpr.jpg
Yes the space effects are great and haven't really aged. I would be interested to know how they were achieved so will do some web surfing (to use a relatively defunct term)
I'm no sure how the effects in the two war films were achieved but they were certainly influential. The production designers may have been aware of the first real time tactical computer 'The Whirlwind' which even had its own light pen system for operators by the mid 1950s.
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