Winona Ryder Didn't Know One Of Her Best Films Flopped At The Box Office

A movie doesn't have to be successful to be a classic. Take "Heathers" — written by Daniel Waters, directed by Michael Lehmann, starring Winona Ryder.

Ryder, fresh off "Beetlejuice," played another death-obsessed teenager. Unlike gothic outsider Lydia Deetz, though, Veronica Sawyer from "Heathers" is in the in-crowd. She hangs out with Westerburg High School's trio of mean girls, all named Heather, but feels disillusioned. So her new bad boy lover J.D. (Christian Slater) convinces her to pull a lethal prank on queen bee Heather Chandler (Kim Walker). 

"Heathers" is the template for other biting black comedy teen movies, from "Mean Girls" to "Jennifer's Body." It even inspired a "Heathers" musical! But it only made $1.1 million on a $3 million budget. 

Entertainment Weekly's oral history of "Heathers" (published in 2014 for its 25th anniversary) has some explanations for why it flopped. Distributor New World Pictures was going bankrupt at the time (it would be swallowed up by News Corp in 1997). "Heathers" producer Denise Di Novi claims she had to take out an $1800 LA Times ad for the movie all by herself. Lehman also clarified, "['Heathers'] did stay in the theaters for a while, [but] it never made a profit." 

The reviews were appreciative, though. Rita Kempley at The Washington Post called "Heathers" one of the best movies she'd seen that year. Roger Ebert was more mixed (he gave "Heathers" 2.5 out of 4 stars) but still praised that the film "inspires thought, and has the ability to shock."

Winona Ryder was also so proud of "Heathers" that it being a failure didn't even occur to her. As she told EW: "I didn't even really know that it didn't do well, to be honest. I was just so damn excited that it was so good. It just reminds me of a wonderful time in an actor's life when all that mattered is that you were really good in a movie."

Since "Heathers" has become so beloved, the initial failure has been washed off. There's even been rumblings of a "Heathers" sequel for decades where an adult Veronica is stuck in a new viper pit: not high school, but Washington D.C.

Ryder's agent apparently knew "Heathers" wasn't going to set multiplexes on fire. As she recounted to EW: "My agent at the time ­literally got on her knees and begged me not to do [the movie]. She had her hands together, and she goes, 'You will never. Work. Again.' We parted ways later." She was right the movie flopped, but Ryder's career kept chugging along throughout the 1990s.

Even with all the great films she's been in, Ryder is still especially proud of "Heathers": "I've always held the original script of 'Heathers' among the great literature that I've ever read. For me, it's like, Ezra Pound, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Daniel Waters, you know?"

Waters' inspirations for his script were both John Hughes (the standard bearer of 1980s teen movies) and Stanley Kubrick; there's as much "Doctor Strangelove" and "A Clockwork Orange" in the DNA of "Heathers" as there is "The Breakfast Club." Waters claimed the film was how many lost "their dark humor virginity," a turn-of-phrase right at home in his "Heathers" script.

Ryder's casting changed some of Waters' vision, and for the best. He first wrote Veronica as evil, comparing her to Travis Bickle from Martin Scorsese's controversial "Taxi Driver." "Suddenly you're rewriting with Winona in mind, and Veronica becomes more of an audience surrogate," Waters said. Ryder is too likable and innocent-looking to pass as a sociopath, so instead Veronica is a teenage girl in over her head and led along by the hot Devil on her shoulder.

"Heathers" may be the title, but the story is about Veronica. Ryder's performance anchors the film and is an undeniable reason why it took off once the "Heathers" VHS was released. The box office would have you think that playing Veronica Sawyer is a footnote in Ryder's career, not one of its highlights.

The belated success story of "Heathers" is something that can't happen today. If the movie even got a theatrical release, it would quickly disappear and be buried beneath the algorithm of whatever streaming platform it ended up on. Barely anyone would discover it, and it would never become a cult classic. Movies used to have paths to success beyond the box office but, since the days of "Heathers," they've vanished.