“We’ve got to do something”: the Ron Howard movie that offered refunds to anyone who walked out
Although he clearly doesn’t have a cynical bone in his body, even Ron Howard must have been concerned that one of the riskiest release strategies imaginable could have blown up in his face.
Not to sound too cynical, but knowing how some of the world works, if a theatre chain offered a money-back guarantee to anyone who’d paid for a ticket to see one of his movies but decided to leave before the end credits, you’d imagine quite a few folk would abandon ship just to save a few pennies.
Then again, it was a Hail Mary to begin with, since the only reason it was introduced was to try and encourage people to see it in the first place, with the film falling drastically short of expectations at the box office, although potentially making even less money doesn’t make a huge amount of fiscal sense.
Having won a pair of Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ for A Beautiful Mind, which also claimed prizes for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ from eight nominations and comfortably cleared $300 million in ticket sales, Howard was within his rights to assume that lightning would strike twice.
After cleansing his palate with his first, and still only, western, The Missing, the filmmaker reunited with Russell Crowe for another period-set drama that had ‘awards bait’ written all over it. Cinderella Man wasn’t necessarily a flop, but with a hefty $88 million budget to recoup, it was far from massively profitable.
A slow start in cinemas emboldened AMC to pull out a promotional tactic that it hadn’t used since Julia Roberts’ Mystic Pizza was released 17 years previously, offering refunds to any disgruntled customers. “We felt it was getting lost and we needed to bring more attention to it,” a spokesperson explained.
As for Universal, the picture’s domestic distributor, the studio didn’t sound entirely enthused. “They were always were vocal about how much they loved the movie, and they said, ‘We’ve got to do something to stimulate people to go,'” Nikki Rocco said. “I give them lots of ‘attaboys’ for being so bold.”
For reasons that remain unexplained more than 20 years later, AMC was oddly determined to transform Cinderella Man into a Cinderella story, urging punters “to focus attention on what is a beautiful film that deserves an audience, but just hasn’t gotten one.”
Did it work? Yes and no. According to the theatre chain, only a dozen or so people asked for refunds, so it wasn’t a total disaster. On the other hand, it only opened in fourth place and barely squeaked past $60 million in the United States, so it wasn’t enough to save Howard’s movie from commercial disappointment.
