Robert Zemeckis’ best films were box office hits that helped put the American filmmaker’s name on the map like Forrest Gump, the Back to the Future films, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. With his top box office flick being 1994’s best picture winner Forrest Gump, it would naturally make sense for the team behind the comedy-drama to have brought in the same numbers with their new drama Here. As the Tom Hanks/Robin Wright-led film flopped at the box office, Zemeckis gets candid about his frustration with the film industry as a whole.
Forrest Gump is an example of a movie that won a ton of weekends at the box office. For five weekends, to be exact, it was actually Paramount’s highest-grossing movie with a total gross of $678.2 million until Titanic beat out that record three years later. An interesting BTS fact about Forrest Gump was that lead Tom Hanks sacrificed his salary to receive a portion of the film’s box office, leading him to reportedly take home over $60 million and reach the status of high-grossing actor.
Based on the Richard McGuire graphic novel, Here brought together the cast of Forrest Gump and its director to tell the story of generations of families in a single spot of a home in the course of a century. Unfortunately, a box office hit was not “here” for Here as the Miramax film was only able to rake up $5 million on a budget of reportedly $50 million. After Here flopped, Robert Zemeckis got candid with Deadline about his takeaway from the disappointment:
I think the theatrical movie business is in a stressful situation right now.
The Oscar-winning director is known for the technological innovations he’s brought to his movies. Robert Zemeckis combined live-action with animation in Who Framed Robert Rabbit, used digital effects to place Forrest Gump in historical footage, and pioneered motion-capture technology for The Polar Express. All of these movies worked very well at the box office, but you could say that it wasn’t just for the technological elements. There was a lot of heart in these stories.
Unfortunately, critics reviewing Here were all in agreement that the technological advancements of applying a fix-angled method to capture a single room across generations lost the film's story and character development. Plus, seeing a movie about middle-class problems and a dead-end marriage wouldn’t be the type of movie audiences would seek out to escape real-world problems. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics gave Here a low score of 36% and audiences 58%. It looks like seeing Forrest and Jenny actors back together in a new story wasn’t enough to win critics and audiences over as well as draw viewers in to see the graphic novel adaptation.
Another challenge that came from making Here a success was its failure to land a U.S. distributor from the start. Sources told Deadline that major studios backed out of producing the movie feeling it was too “risky.” Here was financed mainly through foreign sales. Eventually, Sony stepped in to be Here’s U.S. distributor most likely through their link with Tom Hanks’ movies like A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and A Man Called Otto. However, marketing for the single-room film was difficult. As much as the film’s trailer screamed Forrest Gump memes, it was hard for film marketers to cut clips that would be appealing to show on talk shows.
Robert Zemeckis makes a good point that the film industry is very “stressful” right now in estimating audience expectations and the rise in distribution and marketing challenges. It appears that Forrest Gump star power wasn’t enough to bring audiences to see Here. As a standalone drama like Zemeckis’ film flopped at $5 million, it proves that big studios would rather back up blockbuster films that would guarantee appeal compared to experimental projects. If you’re still willing to give the 2024 movie release a chance, Here is playing in theaters now.
