Rotten potatoes

TARA BRADY on the idiosyncrasies of the Irish box office

OMG. US AUDIENCE figures are down. That sound you hear is the wailing and a gnashing of teeth from across the Atlantic. But how? Three movies – Harry Potter 7-and-a-half, Pirates of the Caribbean 4and Transformers 3- each took more than a billion dollars globally, while juggernaut franchises Twilightand The Hangoverkeep on trucking. But numbers don't lie: box office revenues in the US fell 3.5 per cent to $10.2 billion. All told, the 2011 market fell $500 million short of the previous year's haul.

Roger Ebert, critic and general sense talker, cited a gallimaufry of reasons for the failings of the 2011 slate: no big event movie, oiks in cinemas, lack of choice, 3D surcharges, high refreshment prices, high ticket prices, increasing competition from other media.

These are all valid gripes, but there’s something else. For years Hollywood has strategically positioned its tentpole releases to ensure that everybody gets a piece of the pie. And for years, hovering over dates like an ovulating Catholic has paid dividends. After all, if every big movie enjoys at least one big opening weekend, then true box office flops become a thing of the past.

But they haven’t gone away you know. Every year at least one turkey slips through the wire and it’s “Hello, Speedracer!” And 2011, in its own terrible way, suggests that there’s now more than one gap in the chicken wire. 2011, indeed, marks the Revenge of the Flop.

With this in mind, and with no little sense of schadenfreude, Rotten Potatoes is pleased to present last year's top (bottom?) 10 box-office disasters in ascending order of receipt atrociousness: The Big Year, The Thing, I Don't Know How She Does It, Conan the Barbarian, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, Cowboys Aliens, Green Lantern, Arthur, Sucker Punchand Mars Needs Moms.

At least three of these titles ( Mars Needs Moms, Sucker Punch, Green Lantern) feature prominently in the writings of Nostradamus and deserve their relative box-office squelching. The Big Year (budget $41 million) and Cowboys Aliens (budget $167 million) were not nearly strong enough to justify the initial expense. Glee is like, so over.

Ditto the romcom; if you can't sell tickets for an SJP chick flick, it's time to pack up and go home. But the reboot failings ( Conan the Barbarianand The Thing) make for interesting and terrifying reading, particularly if you're makers of Total Recall 2012or Red Dawn 2012.

This year arrives top-loaded with guaranteed billion-dollar hitters The Hobbitand The Dark Knight Rises. Pundits are promising record takings. Won't you please spare a thought for the people attempting to resurrect Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?Again.