Bewitched (2005) | Bomb Report

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https://bombreport.com/yearly-breakd...5-2/bewitched/

Bewitched gets the big screen mistreatment courtesy of Sony and this unfunny meta redo of the 1964 TV series was budgeted at $80 million. The project was originally in development at Paramount in the mid ’90s and began to move forward as a more faithful remake with Ted Bessell directing and Penny Marshall producing. The project fell apart after Bessell died in October 1996. Bewitched was resurrected in 2003 with Marshall still attached as producer and Nicole Kidman landing a $17.5 million play-or-pay deal.

Sony originally scheduled Bewitched for July 8, 2005 but moved it forward to June 24 when FOX scheduled Fantastic Four for that prime summer date. Bewitched was tracking for a low $20M opening, inline with the opening numbers from Nicole Kidman’s expensive disaster from the previous year The Stepford Wives. Bewitched landed awful reviews and pulled in $20,131,130 — placing #2 for the weekend led by the holdover Batman Begins. The film had poor word of mouth and was given a terrible C+ cinemascore from audiences and sank 54.5% in its second weekend to $9,156,580 and the domestic run closed with $63,313,159.

Overseas, Bewitched pulled in semi-respectable numbers for a throwaway studio comedy — but troubling numbers for an expensive film. The offshore cume was $68,113,010. The worldwide cume was $131.4M, leaving Sony with about $72.2M after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would just about cover the global P&A costs, but leave the budget in the red.

After a disappointing 2005, Sony replaced Columbia TriStar prexy of worldwide marketing Geoffrey Ammer after a string of flops that included Bewitched, Stealth, Zathura, Lords of Dogtown and XXX: State of the Union. Sony took an unspecified but huge loss in their quarter report on those combined pictures.

Sony packaged Bewitched and Stealth for a larger than expected $12M for broadcast sales to both ABC and TBS.

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One suggestion that I read is that a Bewitched feature film in that time frame would've been better had Elisabeth Shue played Samantha and Jim Carrey played Darrin. I always thought that Jim Carrey would've been perfect anyway because he looks just like Dick York. Allegedly, he backed out of the movie because he wanted to do a straight-forward adaptation and he wasn't down for Nora Ephron's deconstructive, post-modern approach.