Reaction
Critical reception was positive, with a 78% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 67 reviews. The film, however, was a failure at the box office and could not come close to surpassing its $80 million budget. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com and TheNumbers.com, the movie grossed only $8,165,551 on its opening weekend, ranking #5 and being beat out by the horror movie Bride of Chucky which ranked #2 and grossed approx $11,830,855 the same weekend. Winfrey has gone on public record stating that she ate 30 pounds of Mac and cheese when she was informed the Saturday after the movie opened that "we got beat by something called Chucky." Oprah also claimed that Beloved's failure at the box office was the worst moment in her career and brought her into a major depression. "It was the only time in my life that I was ever depressed, and I recognised that I (was) depressed because I've done enough shows (on the topic). 'Oh, this is what people must feel like who are depressed.'"
Director Jonathan Demme has commented, "Beloved only played in theaters for four weeks. It made $22 million dollars -- I think that's a lot of money. And the only reason it left theaters after a month was because the Disney corporation that released the picture wanted all the Beloved theaters -- where we were doing very well, in a number of situations. The Walt Disney company wanted those theaters for Adam Sandler's Waterboy. So, we were told that they were gonna bring us back at the end of the year, and they didn't. But, very respectfully, it was in the top 10 its whole life." However, according to the box office data on TheNumbers.com, Demme's claims that Beloved "was in the top ten its whole life" and "only played in theaters for four weeks" were false, as it rapidly fell below the top 10 after its third week in theaters and remained in theaters past December 1998.
Read more about this topic: Beloved (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Children, randomly at first, hit upon something sooner or later that is their mother’s and/or father’s Achilles’ heel, a kind of behavior that especially upsets, offends, irritates or embarrasses them. One parent dislikes name-calling, another teasing...another bathroom jokes. For the parents, this behavior my have ties back to their childhood, many have been something not allowed, forbidden, and when it appears in the child, it causes high-voltage reaction in the parent.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“Christianity was only a very strong and singularly well-timed Salvation Army movement that happened to receive help from an unusual and highly dramatic incident. It was a Puritan reaction in an age when, no doubt, a Puritan reaction was much wanted; but like all sudden violent reactions, it soon wanted reacting against.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)