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Almost Wanna See It Just To See How Bad It Could Be
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When I saw the billboards and print ads for "The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure," I couldn't imagine that any kids would want to see it. I was unfamiliar with the characters and didn't know if they were some kind of Barney the Dinosaur phenomenon of which I just hadn't yet heard. But it turned out that a guy who'd worked on marketing the Teletubbies had made this movie, and I was pretty much on the mark with my initial reaction: It had the worst box-office opening ever for a movie opening on over 2,000 screens, a horrific per-screen average of $207 for the weekend. Even assuming a low average ticket price -- a lot of kids' tickets -- well, you divide $207 by three or four bucks and see what you get. Oy. And this caps a pretty bad summer at the box office; Remove "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Returns" and maybe "Ted" (was "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" in the Summer? That, too), and it was not a good year for Hollywood. (Wall Street Journal)
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