Released: June 30, 1999 Estimated Budget: $170 million Domestic Opening Weekend: $49,705,055 Domestic Gross:$113,745,408
From the Men in Black franchise to Independence Day, Will Smith for years owned the summer-blockbuster category. But the least regrettable aspect of this 1999 misfire is probably the erstwhile rapper’s bouncy, Stevie Wonder–sampling theme song. It was a movie that probably sounded great on paper — a sci-fi/action/western/comedy smorgasbord, featuring the bankable Smith teamed with Salma Hayek, veteran Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh to lend some Shakespearean backbone. And despite underwhelming reviews (“You know something has gone wrong,” mused Roger Ebert, “when a story is about two heroes in the Old West, and the last shot is of a mechanical spider riding off into the sunset”) Wild Wild West scored a respectable U.S. gross of $114 million. Still, it wasn’t nearly enough to lasso its whopping $170 million budget.
Released: May 12, 2000 Estimated Budget: $73 million Domestic Opening Weekend: $11,548,898 Domestic Gross:$21,471,685
Aspiring auteurs beware: a labor of love does not an automatic blockbuster make. Roger Christian’s 2000 Battlefield Earth, an adaptation of the science-fiction novel by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, was partially funded by its star, John Travolta — a longtime Scientologist. The film, in which hairy aliens have enslaved humanity in the year 3000, was made with a $73 million budget, but grossed only $21 million in the U.S. Roger Ebert called it one of the “ugliest, most incomprehensible movies” he had ever seen. Forest Whitaker, one of its co-stars, later expressed his dismay at having participated in the project.
Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79.
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages
