An Indecisive Studio Meant Bad News For Brendan Fraser's Monkeybone

There was a time when it seemed like you could set your watch to a new Brendan Fraser hit movie coming out every couple of years. But after a great run in the 1990s, the star of "George of the Jungle" and "The Mummy" had a curious box office disaster appear out of nowhere.

Heading into the new millennium, Fraser had just wrapped the action spectacular "The Mummy" which grossed more than $155 million, and the supernatural romantic comedy "Bedazzled" which raked in more than $90 million worldwide. And just when it looked like anything he touched would turn to box office gold, "Monkeybone" happened.

Twentieth Century Fox shelled out $75 million and teamed Fraser with "The Nightmare Before Christmas" director Henry Selick for a strange dark comedy that blended animation and live action. But production and promotion gaffes plagued the film from the start. The movie ended Fraser's impressive run of profitable hits, grossing a mere $7.6 million worldwide. Easy math equates that to a loss of more than $67 million.

So, what in the world happened with "Monkeybone?"

"Monkeybone" was dead on arrival when it debuted in more than 1,400 theaters in February of 2001. Entertainment Weekly reported that the movie took in a meager $2.7 million on its opening weekend. The film not only serves as a cautionary tale about how quickly audiences can lose interest in actors, but also the role that studios play in the success of their films. More than name recognition alone is needed.

Granted, the dark comedy's meta aspects weren't an easy sell. In the film, an animator (Fraser) gets sucked into a world of his own creation where he gets pestered by a cheeky antagonist monkey named Monkeybone. Fraser called the film the most expensive arthouse movie that Twentieth Century Fox ever made. "What you see on the screen is just handmade, over-the-top everything," Fraser recently said. "It was like the keys got handed to the inmates on that movie."

Still, you'd think the combined star power of Fraser, Bridget Fonda, John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, and Rose McGowan would be enough to entice audiences to theaters.

Things started to get a little hairy when the studio exec that greenlit the film was fired from Twentieth Century Fox. Director Henry Selick believes the studio gave up on the film when that happened. Then audio issues plagued the film's initial screening, prompting the studio to push the film into editing hell.

After a studio cut, they brought in executive producer Chris Columbus to re-edit the film to make it more mainstream, pushing the film further from Selick's original vision. Good edits can make or break a film. "Monkeybone" was now on its third edit.

Despite finally having a final cut, it looked like Twentieth Century Fox didn't ever want to release the film.

Once a third and final edit of "Monkeybone" was completed, Twentieth Century Fox couldn't decide on a release date for the film. A fall release date was discussed. Then the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were considered. It went on and on like this, and it seemed that the studio was convinced that the key to the film's success was picking the right debut date.

By the time they decided on a release date of Feb. 23, 2001, they only had two weeks to run any kind of promotion for the film. And Twentieth Century Fox had lost so much faith in the movie that they pulled ads ahead of the movie's release. So when positive reviews from The L.A. Times, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly came out, there was no way to promote them.

Rose McGowan, who plays a waitress named Miss Kitty in the film's bizarre dreamland Down Town, places all of the blame for the film's failure at the feet of the studio. In 2016 she took to her Instagram account to write:

"The movie would've been incredible (at least the underworld part) if the men at 20th Century Fox (the suits) hadn't fired the director, a true artist, Henry Selick 1/2 the way through filming. What #FoxStudios turned this film into because of their fear and lack of artistic thinking was a travesty. They truly robbed us, the audience, of a possible classic."

To this day it seems that the film's director and main actors believed in the movie's potential. It's easy to see why they might think that too much monkey business on the part of the studio was the real reason behind the "Monkeybone" box office bomb.