Do you know the lowest grossing movie in the history of cinema? It’s not really a very famous movie in France because it wasn’t released there: it’s “Zyzzyx Road”.
Have you seen this 2006 thriller with an incredible name (and perfect for doing Scrabble…) that echoes the sweet title of Zyzzyx Road signed by John Penn? no No big deal, you still look like the vast majority of viewers.
It all begins when Leo Grillo, the executive producer and actor of the upcoming feature film, decides to film “Rambo with the Dog.” Only he can’t find an existing script on the subject and ends up with John Penn, who offers the story of the Zizix road, or the more or less wild odyssey of a criminal couple who escape with a corpse in a trunk. A car with a cursed road path.
“It’s nice,” Grillo thinks, “the money can be used for my animal film project.” Filming begins with the real difficulty of arresting Tom Sizemore, who the police suspect of drug use, while on probation. However, the incident is without real impact, after Grillo’s big scare like Penny.
Tom Sizemore
When the film was released, Tom Sizemore and Katherine Heigl took their oars and rowed harder than ever to attract audiences to this small $1.2 million production, but to no avail.
Shown to one room and seen by six viewers, the film very officially brings in… $30 at the end of its six-day run at the Dallas room. Due to form and anecdote, other films have taken quite a beating at the US box office. For example, the scary / horror movie SF Storage 24. Released in 2012, only took $72…
That said, and to be more complete than John Penn’s film, the story is a bit more nuanced. Open page Entertainment Weekly published a very interesting article on this topic in 2009.
Katherine Heigl in “Zyzzyx Road”.
In fact, these famous sessions in Dallas were not meant to be commercially exploited. They intended to honor an agreement with the Screen Actors Guild that allows low-budget films to pay actors a lower rate as long as the film enjoys a national release.
“We rented the hall for 1000 dollars, we paid for the hall to show the movie every day” Leo Grillo, who explains the film’s protagonist, explains in an articleEntertainment Weekly. The number of viewers does not matter, the main thing is to show the film. “From a legal point of view, we had one session a day. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a noise? According to the laws of physics, no, but according to the law. Screen Actors Guild, the answer is yes”.
Source: allocine
Emily Jhon is a product and service reviewer at Gossipify, known for her honest evaluations and thorough analysis. With a background in marketing and consumer research, she offers valuable insights to readers. She has been writing for Gossipify for several years and has a degree in Marketing and Consumer Research from the University of Oxford.
