Tales From The Box Office: Meet The Spartans, One Of The Worst-Reviewed Movies Ever, Was Still A Hit

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

Spoof movies have been a staple of comedy for decades. For as long as popular cinema exists, there is an argument to be made that somebody should be there to send up the popular genre of the moment. Perhaps the greatest of all time in this department were David and Jerry Zucker, aka the Zucker brothers, who were behind such comedy masterpieces as "Top Secret," "Ruthless People," and, most importantly, "Airplane!"

Unfortunately, the spoof movie took a pretty rough turn in the 2000s largely thanks to the success of "Scary Movie," a send up of the slasher craze that was reignited by "Scream" several years earlier. The film was a big hit and spawned several sequels and, before getting massive rewrites after being sold to Dimension Films, it was the up-and-coming screenwriting duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer who penned that original screenplay. It not only gave them a name in Hollywood, but damned if it didn't give them a niche too, as they went on to make several more of these parody pictures. Arguably their most reviled moment came in 2008 when "Meet the Spartans," a spoof of Zack Snyder's hit "300" (amongst other things), which remains one of the worst-reviewed movies of all time. Yet, amazingly enough, it still became a sizable hit.

In honor of the movie's 15th anniversary, we're looking back at "Meet the Spartans," how it came to be, the bizarre elusiveness of Friedberg and Seltzer, the unlikely amount of money the movie made despite being universally panned, and what we can learn from it all these years later. Let's dig in.

Following the success of "Scary Movie," Friedberg and Seltzer attempted to get other projects off the ground, but ultimately they were pragmatic about how Hollywood works and ended up going back to the well of spoof movies. So, they wrote and directed "Date Movie," a parody of rom-coms that made $85 million at the box office against a $20 million budget. A movie that was edited by Paul Hirsch, of "Star Wars: A New Hope" fame, no less. "Epic Movie" followed in short order, all while the "Scary Movie" sequels were continuing to make bank as well.

So, what was to be next for the critically maligned, hit-making duo? Given that "300" had just made $456 million globally and became something of a pop culture sensation, they ultimately landed on what would primarily be a send up of that genre. And thus, Fox and the filmmaking duo got to work on "Meet the Spartans." The film would also tackle other recent hits, such as "Spider-Man 3," "Happy Feet," and "Transformers" — though this was not what they had planned as their next movie.

Originally, Friedberg and Seltzer were set to helm "A Christmas Carol," which would have starred Rainn Wilson and was meant to be his big movie coming out of "The Office." However, New Regency bailed mere days before production was to begin, reportedly due to budget concerns. So instead, the filmmakers pitched something else. Speaking in a rare interview with Grantland in 2014, Seltzer explained:

"So they don't do it, and you're disappointed for a beat, and then you go, 'Well, OK, what about this?' And then we sold them 'Meet the Spartans,' [which] was a little bit more digestible, and it was something we could have a lot of fun with. They liked the script and they go, 'OK, yeah, we could feel financially secure about that and you guys could do what you need to do.'"

What's somewhat strange is that Friedberg and Seltzer very rarely do interviews. That 2014 chat with Grantland is, perhaps, the best and only window into their mind. To that end, Seltzer explained why they were content to keep making these spoof flicks, saying, "We like to work. And [we] know how difficult it is to get a movie made. So if you have a movie that worked financially, then the studios are much more apt to do that again than something more original."

Seltzer and Friedberg were, if nothing else, realists about how the movie business operates. Money is the primary language that studios speak. Reviews be damned, if they make money, so be it. The other thing that helped is that the duo developed a reputation for being thrifty, which is why producers like Peter Safran (now the co-head of DC Studios) like working with them. The duo don't even particularly care that their movies are, generally speaking, hated by critics. On that topic, Seltzer said:

"We love writing, we love directing, we love the actors we work with. We have our own families that we raised. Jason has kids, I have kids, we have wives, so we don't sit around [reading reactions]. Honestly, we don't have a lot of ego that needs to be stroked. We don't want to be condemned, but we don't pay that much attention. We just kind of do our work."

And work they did. They assembled a cast that includes Sean Maguire, Kevin Sorbo, Carmen Elektra, and Diedrich Bader. They had the movie turned around in time to make its way to theaters in early 2008, while all of these recent hits and pop culture things of the moment would be fresh in the minds of the moviegoing public.

"Meet the Spartans" was met downright hatred from the critic community. Not only does the movie carry a miserable 2% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but the reviews are utterly scathing. Even the so-called positive ones aren't exactly glowing, with NewsBlaze saying, "Don't expect anything of depth and you won't be disappointed by this predigested pabulum." 

Not only was the film not getting any help from reviewers, it was actively hated upon by just about everyone who saw it ahead of release. The closest thing to a nice comment came from Zack Snyder, who saw the film as a compliment to the success of "300," saying in 2009, "I think it's pretty funny. You can't get upset about that. If the thing didn't hit pop culture in the knees pretty hard, there'd be no reason to spoof it."

In the end, it simply didn't matter. "Meet The Spartans" was released in the U.S. on January 25, 2008, and amazingly enough, it took the number one spot at the box office. It made $18.5 million, narrowly beating out "Rambo" ($18.2 million), which also opened that weekend. In a week when beloved movies such as "Cloverfield," "Juno," and "There Will Be Blood" were also in the top ten, here we had a movie that seemingly nobody could say anything nice about taking the crown.

The film finished its run with $38.2 million domestic and an even better $47.6 million internationally for an $85.8 million global haul. For painful reference, "There Will Be Blood," considered by many to be one of the greatest films of the last 25 years, finished its run with $76.1 million. The only thing even sort of holding "Meet the Spartans" back was its $30 million budget. However, with DVD sales still a thing 15 years ago, along with streaming/cable rights and well as other revenue streams Fox undoubtedly made money with this trainwreck, thus ensuring that Friedberg and Seltzer would have careers for at least another few years.

There was no rest for the wicked as the duo's next film, "Disaster Movie" (a parody of, you guessed it, disaster movies), also opened in August of 2008. Unfortunately for them, it performed poorly, taking in just $36.7 million globally. But they would bounce back quickly with 2010's "Vampires Suck," capitalizing on "Twilight" to the tune of $81.4 million. But by the time "The Starving Games" arrived in 2013, the juice on these spoof films had pretty much run out, and the two have done very little since, with 2014's "Best Night Ever" and 2015's "Superfast!" hardly registering on Hollywood's radar.

In any event, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have, undoubtedly, made an ungodly amount of money for making movies that are, by and large, terrible. "Scary Movie" is by far their highest-rated film critically, with everything else sitting at below 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. They even have a couple of rare 0% ratings for "The Starving Games" and "Best Night Ever." Though, rather crucially, those movies were not big hits like "Meet the Spartans" was.

I'm not one to preach, but for me, the big takeaway here is something I tell people frequently: vote with your dollars. Hollywood follows the money and, quite frankly, the only reason these widely reviled movies exist is because they made money. Period. No studio wants to be associated with garbage, but if garbage makes money, nobody is going to turn it away. 

So be intentional with your viewings. Spend your money on movies you'd like to support. Don't spend money on ironic viewings that will only encourage more similar nonsense in the future. And, in the streaming age, don't hate-watch stuff because, by the same token, Netflix or other services will only care about the numbers. Movies this bad only persist if we, the moviegoing public, justify their existence.