The 2002 Eddie Murphy science fiction flop, The Adventures of Pluto Nash is one of the greatest debacles in Hollywood history, almost surpassing Town & Country and Ishtar. With a $100 million budget, Pluto Nash arrived in theaters in August of 2002 over a year late–its original release date was in April of 2001–and opened with an appallingly low $2.2 million first weekend gross, for an average of just $941 per screen.
Still, Pluto Nash would be just another in a long line of Hollywood disappointments if it weren’t for the sheer enormity of its failure and, more surprisingly, for the way both Warner Brothers and Castle Rock have blamed "bad buzz" for the film’s lack of box office success.
Mired in production purgatory since 1980, Pluto Nash didn’t get off the ground until early 1999, when talk surfaced that Jennifer Lopez might step into the lead role of Dina Lake. Lake is an aspiring nightclub singer who, in the year 2087, becomes embroiled in an action-packed intergalactic mystery on the moon alongside her dashing employer and eventual love interest, Pluto Nash (Murphy). But Lopez, and later Halle Berry (the studio’s second choice) chose to pass on the project. It wasn’t until early 2000 that the film found its leading lady in Rosario Dawson, an up-and-coming actress who had recently appeared in Light it Up and who would later star in Josie and the Pussycats and Men in Black II.
With an original budget of $80 million (including $20 million for Murphy alone), shooting on Pluto Nash began in Canada on April 10, 2000 where an enormous set–recreating a dazzling Vegas-style moon colony–was constructed. Directed by Ron Underwood (City Slickers, Tremors) and featuring a cast that also included Randy Quaid (as Pluto’s outdated robot sidekick), Joe Pantoliano, Pam Grier, Peter Boyle, Jay Mohr and James Rebhorn, the film seemed to be a hit in the making.
After a relatively smooth principal photography, Pluto Nash was scheduled for release in April 2001, one year after production had begun. But initial test screenings elicited dismal responses from audiences and shortly thereafter an advance review of the film appeared on Harry Knowles’ Ain’t-It-Cool website on January 27, 2001. The
unfavorable notice–which claimed that the film consisted mainly of "lame action and almost no laughs"– wound up appearing in Time Magazine, and apparently sent Warner Brothers and Pluto Nash’s production company, Castle Rock, into a panic. This motivated them to order expensive reshoots and more special effects that would move the budget closer to its final $100 million figure.
This additional work seemed to pay off–the studio indicated that further test screening audiences proved much more receptive to Pluto Nash–but the film’s release was pushed back again until August 16, 2002 in order to avoid interfering with the release of another Warner Brothers/Murphy project, Showtime. However, according to Warner Brothers, the negative reviews and articles on Pluto Nash that had been peppering the Web for more than a year and a half had long since irrevocably prejudiced moviegoers against the film, and their suspicions seemed to be confirmed by the movie’s DOA opening weekend.
Yet while bad buzz may have led Warner Brothers to dump the film into theaters without advance press screenings or much advertising fanfare, blaming a random Internet review and tiny Time Magazine blurb for the film’s miserable box office performance appears to be just an excuse for a very poor product. And in the end, years of rewrites and reshoots could not save the pathetically constructed and shockingly unfunny The Adventures of Pluto Nash from suffering a swift demise. NICHOLAS SCHAGER
