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Disney had bad luck leading up to the April 9th release of The Alamo. Hidalgo (October 2003) and the animated Home on the Range (April 2, 2004) were both flops. In a shareholder uprising, Michael Eisner, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, was replaced in March 2004. The lucrative subsidiary Pixar was considering moving to another studio.
In the two years between Disney's May 2002 greenlighting of The Alamo and its April 2004 release, there were huge changes made behind the scenes. This led to Hollywood talk that the film was in trouble, which was soon widely considered fact within the industry.
In May 2002, Michael Eisner had proudly announced Disney's plan to make the film, saying he wanted to “capture the post-September 11th surge in patriotism.” Ron Howard signed on to direct (having just won Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind), Brian Grazer to produce, Russell Crowe to star, Ethan Hawke as a supporting actor, and they had Disney approval on an R-rating for violence. They had also nabbed a surprisingly high $135 million budget. In July 2002, Disney apparently became skittish about the film, reducing its budget to $75 million and insisting it have a PG-13 rating in order to appeal to a wider audience.
After that, Howard left the project, refusing to make the film without the R rating, and Grazer, Crowe and Hawke soon followed. Texas native John Lee Hancock (his first film was Disney's The Rookie (2002) with Dennis Quaid -- a smaller-scale, moderate success) signed on to direct The Alamo with its lower budget and PG-13 rating. Hancock's inexperience showed. Post-production, he said, “I felt like I was directing Monday Night Football from the truck… I had never done anything like this before. It was big.” He also commented that he had less production time on The Alamo than he had had for The Rookie, which was not an ensemble piece or an historical epic.
Disney seemed to misunderstand The Alamo's audience. In the first half of 2004, moviegoers flocked to violent religious epics (The Passion of the Christ) and anti-Bush political critiques (Fahrenheit 9/11). This film, with its PG-13 rating and theme of patriotism, did not attract big audiences.
In addition, Disney's $35 million marketing techniques and the subject matter of the film were considered offensive to some. Many Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals were angry at the tone and one-sidedness of the telling of the story, as well as the racism synonymous for Mexicans with the struggle for Texan independence, which some felt was not depicted enough in the film. Disney seemed ignorant to this controversy, placing gigantic billboards for the film in the center of the Mission District of San Francisco.
On October 29, 2003, eight weeks prior to The Alamo's planned release on Christmas Day, with some billboard ads in place and trailers mailed to the news media, Dick Cook, chairman of the Disney Studios, pulled the film for re-editing. Cook commented, “The end product is more important than the need to meet arbitrary deadlines for awards, etc.” The film was edited from three hours to two hours (which is often a death sentence for films, note the drastic editing of All the Pretty Horses, which bombed), and then two weeks before its April 9th release, fifteen minutes were re-inserted. In the end, Dennis Quaid's role was significantly reduced and several smaller roles were eliminated altogether. Ultimately, The Alamo cost $107 million to make and grossed about $23 million worldwide. Bad timing, pessimistic messages sent to the press, and ill-advised decisions made by executives at Disney all conspired to lead to the film's box office and critical failure.
EMILY RIEMER yes, it's true: Texas was successfully annexed by the U.S. only one month after the infamous battle at the Alamo. |
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The Christmas 2003 release of Disney's patriotic epic The Alamo had originally been timed so that the film could be considered for Oscars.