It was a box office failure, it failed to break even earning only 52 Million from a 30 Million Budget, how did this happen? I mean, the film wasn't that bad.
It's not a lie if you believe it.
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Both Box Office Mojo and The Numbers show a gross of only 52 Million in the U.S.
No foreign market gross numbers.
It's not a lie if you believe it.
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Yeah, any movie that can make almost double it's budget in the U.S. alone can be considered profitable. They say a film has to make at least twice it's budget to break even so assuming they made more than $8 million in foreign, video, cable sale, it was a very profitable movie.
However, since the first two movies made about $80 million each, it had to be considered a bit of an underperformer.
I don't remember that. Of course, maybe because I didn't catch its box office take (as if I care), I didn't know that. It could be because it was released in the springtime, which might not have been the right time for it, or because it was the third time around, people might've gotten tired of the idea. Yes, it was a good film, I'll agree to that. Also, it was funny that a few months after its release, Simpson commits those two brutal murders. Can anyone watch that film without thinking of that?
shareSure, the box-office came up a bit short compared to the first two films, but VHS (and later DVD) sales and rentals were decent.
Although "Naked Gun 33 1/3" was not a massive hit, it still returned a decent profit for Paramount.
For the most part the number of parodies (Naked Gun, Loaded Weapon, Robin Hood, Hot Shots, etc.) were all over the market in 1993 or and they had diminishing returns from Airplane highs. $52M on $30 M budget is break even with the home video and foreign making in the marginal black. I enjoyed it at the theaters but I found like most of the above movies, the jokes seemed more forced than before. I later rented the movie a year and quite honestly I can hardly remember a thing while the first two I still remember some of the quotes.
shareYeah and in addition to all of the spoofs consider that Ace Ventura had just hit theaters about a month or two earlier in 1994, which brought in a much younger comedy star in Jim Carrey. Perhaps a nearly 70 year old Leslie Nielsen didn't hold much appeal for younger audiences by then?
I ended up catching it at the dollar theater in roughly May 1994, right before the whole OJ controversy blew up.
Simpson commits those two brutal murdersAllegedly...
I'd wouldn't call this a flat out "failure" or "flop". Many movies barely even make their budget during the initial theatrical run. Given later video & DVD sales, it HAD to have been a profit for Paramount, though a marginal one.
Keep in mind Viacom bought Paramount right about when this movie was released, combine the new ownership with the lesser box office take, no more Naked Gun movies.
Hey, at least we got a trilogy! Not bad for movies based on a short lived 70s TV show!
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I'm your average ordinary everyday, jorgeegeetooo!
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It definitely made money, just not as much as the others.
It certainly couldn't be called a failure.
The OP is having himself on and doing a Frank Drebbin.
As others have said, by 1993 spoof comedies (like Hot Shots: Part Deux, Loaded Weapon, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, CB4 and b-grade ones such as Plump Fiction and Fatal Instinct) were saturating the market and people could have tired of the genre.
Also, Jim Carrey had recently released Ace Ventura a few months earlier in January 1994 and the comedy market had the likes of Carrey, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley (with Airheads) and Mike Myers (with the Wayne's World movies) dominating, so I guess audience's tastes had shifted to different types of comedy by this point.
While Naked Gun 3 isn't perfect (the Thelma & Louise parody goes nowhere), I still get a lot of laughs from the film and it concluded the trilogy on a high note.
It did ok at the box office, especially for a March release. But it was a major come down from the previous two movies, including the 2nd movie which was a summer release. Perhaps people were just over the Naked Gun movies.
However this movie didn't get any where near the VHS/DVD sales or the run on cable because 3 months after it was released OJ Simpson became persona non grata. Since it didn't get that second life like most movies, its been mostly forgotten.
The first movie avoided this because we already had 6 years of history with that film so even with OJ it was already engrained in our memories. And OJ was only in 3 scenes.
You have to remember this whole thing started from the TV show "Police Squad!".
It was edgy, unexpected, filled to the brim with all kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle jokes, absolutely hilarious.
Cancelled, because it demanded too much focus from the audience, so families couldn't eat dinner while watching it. Or something like that.
They used many ideas in that show, some that are repeated, and whatever they had left over, they used in the movie, 'Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad!"
This means by the time the sequel appeared, they had pretty much ran out of new ideas and the jokes had been squeezed dry. You can see many of the jokes of the first movie repeated in the second one.
The second movie isn't as good as the first one, the jokes fall flat, and the movie is a bit more boring. It has a poignant plot, but it just doesn't quite reach the magical quality of the first movie.
So when they made another sequel, it was pretty obvious it was just for money at this point, not to show any good, leftover jokes or ideas. They started doing the most low-brow humor possible, like that whole sperm bank stuff, and repeating the jokes from the TV show and so on. The whole thing just descends to a 'silly chaos' at the end instead of having a really funny structure, like the first movie did.
In other words, more money doesn't mean better movie, it's often the exact opposite, as a big investment means they want to 'play it safe' instead of trying something new and unpredictable, which was the whole point of the original TV show!
This means, the show had mutated from its origins into a 'typical comedy', that can be funny sometimes, but doesn't dare attempt something truly outrageous anymore, and as a result, just isn't very funny, while also trying too hard.
Leslie Nielsen is best when he is used correctly; no funny faces, but instead, deadpan delivery of ridiculous things.
This third movie didn't really understand that anymore, the first one did.