Box Office Poison: ‘Shock and Awe’ Is Director Rob Reiner’s 6th Mega-Flop in a Row
How do has-been directors get funded after ten years of flops?
https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/07/16/box-office-poison-shock-and-awe-is-director-rob-reiners-6th-mega-flop-in-a-row/
This weekend, Reiner’s Shock and Awe crashed and burned at the box office. For some reason, even though it is 2018, Reiner is still wasting millions of dollars to attack former President George W. Bush. This, even after every single movie attacking Bush bombed.
In 2010, Reiner directed the $14 million Flipped — it grossed less than $2 million. That is not a typo — less than TWO million dollars. Things got a lot worse two years later.
Despite the presence of Morgan Freeman and a budget of just $5 million, The Magic of Bell Isle, which Reiner both wrote and directed, lost every penny due to a — and again this is not a typo — gross of just $102,388.
In 2014, with no less than Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton on the poster, And So It Goes bottomed out in wide release (1762 theaters) with just $15 million domestic, which did not even cover its $18 million production budget. Add at least as much for publicity, and you are talking about a $20 million loss.
Reiner’s Being Charlie performed so poorly in May of 2016, it never expanded beyond 14 screens and managed to only gross $30,400.
The following year, Reiner’s $20 million biopic LBJ ranked as an even bigger catastrophe, with a horrific $2.47 million gross after opening in 659 theaters. This one starred Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Richard Jenkins.
Reiner also appears to have lost his touch creatively. There are plenty of box office disasters that still rank as good, even great movies. This is not the case for Reiner. Critics savaged all six of these flops with embarrassingly low Rotten Tomatoes’ scores. Flipped: 54 percent, The Magic of Belle Isle: 30 percent, And So It Goes: 18 percent, Being Charlie: 24 percent, LBJ: 55 percent, and Shock and Awe: 35 percent.
The truth is that the 71-year-old Reiner hit his creative peak two decades ago with The American President in 1995. And even if you set aside Meathead’s dismal box office performance, over the last 22-years, Reiner has directed 11 movies, not a single one of them memorable.