The Onion Movie - on DVD June 3rd…
Once upon a time there was a very funny movie called “The Kentucky Fried Movie” (1977) - it was made for peanuts and made tons of cash because stoner kids loved the sketches in the film. Later on the success of “Kentucky Fried” spawned “Amazon Women on the Moon” (1987) - these were classic films that helped informed my sense of humor from a young age with short comedic parodies and the like.
Later on, one Weird Al Yankovic made a superb film called “UHF” which flopped tremendously at the box office and with that the age of sketch movies was dead, or rather had transtitioned to television in the form of shows like “In Living Color” (1990-1995), “The Ben Stiller Show” (1992-1993) and “Mad TV” (1995-).
One day some execs at New Regency and Fox must have woken up still stoned from a weekend party at Arnon Milchan’s Malibu house and decided to team up with “The Onion” (a satiric newspaper) to create a sketch comedy movie for the 21st Century. This project loomed in development hell for ages and ages and must have cost the studio substantially more than “Kentucky Fried Movie’s” $150 budget. (I’m guessing more in the neighborhood of $10-$15 million.) And ultimately the studio execs were so not confident with thier stoned decision that they decided not to release the movie theatrically.
So after much debate and hesitation, “The Onion Movie” comes to DVD on June 3rd.
To my surprise, what’s been cut together for the trailer looks appealling. I’d watch it if I were stoned at home. The question is - even with the safer business model of direct-to-DVD (only a $2-$3 million marketing spend instead of $30 million + if the film would be released wide theatrically) is there any chance a film this expensive can recoup for the studios?
Who cares what the answer to that is….
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