It’s fairly well known that The Golden Compass was a big bomb thanks to all those totalitarian religious nuts who can’t seem to stand it when anyone calls them….totalitarian religious nuts. Not so fast. It seems that while the fantasy film pulled in a low $70 million here in the U.S. (on a budget of $180 million), it is doing better in other countries. A lot better. In fact, it might gross as much as $400 million worldwide.
So why did a movie that was a relative failure in the U.S. make so much overseas. It has to be because of our Puritanical reaction to the anti-religious mania of the movie’s source material, right? Well, no. There is the obvious reason that it did poorly with critics, but that might just be one factor. According to a fairly lengthy article in Variety a lot of the difference had to do with who was distributing the film.
New Line sold off foreign rights during the production phase and the foreign distributors did a better job marketing the film and keeping it in theaters.. Even in heavy Catholic countries, like Italy, the movie did fairly well because it was pushed as a family film rather than a Lord of the Rings style fantasy adventure. It also played longer despite a slow start. Something that didn’t happen in the U.S.
So, besides giving the Vatican the old middle finger, what does this mean? Well, there are the other two books in the trilogy to be made, starting with The Subtle Knife. Could the higher foreign box office and maybe a new marketing strategy for the DVD release make this a viable franchise, something that once seemed laughable? Maybe so. Time for the Pope to get his pen out.
