AN AMERICAN CAROL

An American Carol

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  [Total: 14 Average: 2.1]
  Genre(s): Comedy

• • Directed By: David Zucker
  • Written By: David Zucker, Myrna Sokoloff, Lewis Friedman
  • Release Date: October 3, 2008
  • Domestic Distributor: Vinvendi Entertainment
  • Cast: Kevin P. Farley, Kelsey Grammer, James Woods, Jon Voight
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Box Office Info:

Budget: $20 million	Financed by: Mpower Pictures; Moving Picture Institute
Domestic Box Office: $7,013,191	Overseas Box Office: $8,992

The budget for An American Carol was $20 million and David Zucker’s right wing spoof of liberal politics was mostly financed by Mpower Pictures — co-founded by Mel Gibson’s producing partner Stephen McEveety.  The nonprofit group the Moving Picture Institute contributed some backing to the production.

David Zucker had been apart of the Zucker Abrahams Zucker team — which had produced the goofy comedy classics Airplane!, Ruthless People, Top Secret! and The Naked Gun series.  David Zucker’s solo outings were a plague of bad comedies BASEketball, My Boss’s Daughter, Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4 and the execrable An American Carol — which killed off what was left of his career.

The newly formed theatrical unit at Vinvendi Entertainment distributed An American Carol in the US and the film received tons of free press from conservative personalities including Rush Limbaugh, a roster of Fox News personalities and Kelsey Grammer did press throughout the conservative talk show circuit.  Vivendi didn’t screen the pic for critics under the assumption that reviews would be unkind to a conservative film and when the reviews eventually posted, they were hateful regardless of the reviewer’s political leanings.

An American Carol opened over a crowded weekend, with six other films being released — Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Flash of Genius, Blindness, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and Religulous.  It was booked into 1,639 theaters and flopped with $3,656,000 — placing #9 for the weekend led by Beverly Hills Chihuahua.  An American Carol sank 61.8% in its second frame to $1,395,000 and promptly lost most of its theater count.  It closed its run with only $7,013,191.  Vinvendi would see returned about $3.8 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, leaving most of the P&A expenses in the red.

A right wing comedy didn’t have much appeal to US moviegoers and it would have none to overseas moviegoers and the few territories where this found a release, it went straight to video and it made all of $8,992 in Croatia.