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BOMB REPORT entry

posted 5 years ago by TMC-4 (19408)
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https://twitter.com/bombreport/status/1091874131245785089

As 1997 movies are being added on their anniversary date -- a few have been missed due to a lovely winter illness. Here's the write-up for the ignored and then mostly forgotten semi-follow up to A Fish Called Wanda - 'Fierce Creatures'

https://bombreport.com/yearly-breakdowns/1997-2/fierce-creatures/

After the comedy classic A Fish Called Wanda (1988) pulled in $188.5M worldwide on a $7.5M budget, John Cleese announced a follow up project in 1992 originally under the title Dead Fish 2. Fierce Creatures was financed by Universal and was initially budgeted at $18M. Filming began in May 1995 and the production was fraught with cast disagreements that mostly spurred from Cleese being indecisive about his material. By the time the shoot wrapped, it was $2M over budget.

A spring 1996 release was planned, but in November ’95 the picture began the test screening process and scores were poor. In February 1996, Universal agreed to massive reshoots, but the cast could not be assembled again until August. Fred Schepisi was brought in to take over directing duties from Robert Young and 52 pages were reshot over five weeks — adding $7M in expenses and bringing the budget up to $27 million.

Fierce Creatures was pushed out of 1996 and dated for the dumping ground on January 24, 1997. It bowed against Zeus and Roxanne and buzz was low. Despite the troubled production, reviews were lukewarm, but the movie was largely viewed as a major step down from Wanda. Fierce Creatures was dead on arrival with $3,759,480 — placing #8 for the very slow weekend led by the 7th frame of Jerry Maguire. It declined 38.8% to $2,300,445 in its second session and then sank 62.5% to $861,545 in its third weekend. The US run closed with a terrible $9,381,260.

There were slight signs of life during the international run, where it pulled in $31.9M. Universal’s parent company Seagram’s reported that the poor box office performances of Fierce Creatures and Dante’s Peak dented the fiscal quarter.

[–] TMC-4 (19408) 4 years ago

https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-place/2020/3/26/my-world-of-flops-case-file-157the-travoltacage-project-18-two-of-a-kind-1983#comment-4852598603

I've been thinking about Fierce Creatures since I read the third volume of Michael Palin's diaries recently, and from his account you get a sense of why the film didn't pan out very well. I don't think the basic premise of the film was all that hot anyway, but the constant rewriting, and the studio-mandated reshoots by another director didn't help. The film might have worked out better had been made closer to when it was written (which wasn't too long after Wanda) but I think it was delayed by the unavailability of the main players. Anyway, Cleese began writing the script in the early 1990s, it began filming in May 1995 and was completed by November of that year. Then when it was decided to do reshoots, the film was on hold until they could get everybody back again, which didn't happen until August 1996. By the time the film made it to theatres in early 1997, it was probably dogged by word of mouth about its protracted and troubled production. No wonder it lacked the spontaneity of Wanda, and it probably didn't help that by the time Fierce Creatures came out, Wanda was almost a decade old, making the new film seem even more like a belated, desperate reunion.