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Gore’s Film, Lionized by
Media, A Pussycat at Box Office
Documentary’s lackluster performance
worse than ‘Gigli,’ ‘A Prairie Home Companion’
By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute
June 13, 2006
Perhaps not since “Gigli” has a movie so highly
anticipated by the media done so little at the box office.
Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” has been and still is being
strongly promoted in the media, but as with the ill-fated
Lopez-Affleck outing, the moviegoers aren’t busting down theater
doors to see it.
Despite lengthy interviews on “The Early
Show” and “Today” or a coveted interview slot on late night talk
shows like “The Tonight Show,” Gore’s apocalyptic view of global
warming is not burning up the box office. It’s a sleeper that
refuses to be roused, but the media keep on trying. Gore is slated
to be interviewed by Larry King tonight on CNN. That’s the latest
media push to promote climate change, a trend going back 110 years
according to a Special Report called “Fire
and Ice.”
Gore’s film recently hit its widest release
on the June 9-11 weekend and is showing in 122 theaters nationwide.
So far, despite a strong per-theater earning average, it’s not yet
made $4 million in its three weeks on the silver screen. The
aforementioned “Gigli”
only lasted in theaters for three weeks, but grossed more than
Gore’s movie has to date, making $6 million.
Inconveniently enough, Gore’s tour de force isn’t just losing out to
blockbusters like “X-Men 3” and “Cars,” which are raking in money at
thousands of theaters nationwide. He’s not even doing well with the
NPR set either.
The dry-witted and un-hyped Robert Altman-Garrison Keillor film “A
Prairie Home Companion,”
made more than $4.5 million in its opening weekend of June 9-11. The
film is a theatrical spin-off of
Keillor’s
public radio program, and
Keillor’s
columns
leave no mistake about his leftward political leanings.
The Business & Media Institute has reported
on the media’s push to market Gore’s new image, from Time hyping his
Current TV in August 2005 to the media’s push this
May and
June
to promote his documentary.
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