An Indecisive Studio Meant Bad News For Brendan Fraser’s Monkeybone
Twentieth Century Studios
By Travis Yates/Dec. 11, 2022 8:00 pm EST
Heading into the new millennium, Fraser had just wrapped the action spectacular “The Mummy” which grossed more than $155 million, and the supernatural romantic comedy “Bedazzled” which raked in more than $90 million worldwide. And just when it looked like anything he touched would turn to box office gold, “Monkeybone” happened.
So, what in the world happened with “Monkeybone?”
It may have been too strange for the studio
Still, you’d think the combined star power of Fraser, Bridget Fonda, John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, and Rose McGowan would be enough to entice audiences to theaters.
Things started to get a little hairy when the studio exec that greenlit the film was fired from Twentieth Century Fox. Director Henry Selick believes the studio gave up on the film when that happened. Then audio issues plagued the film’s initial screening, prompting the studio to push the film into editing hell.
After a studio cut, they brought in executive producer Chris Columbus to re-edit the film to make it more mainstream, pushing the film further from Selick’s original vision. Good edits can make or break a film. “Monkeybone” was now on its third edit.
The studio ignored positive reviews
Rose McGowan, who plays a waitress named Miss Kitty in the film’s bizarre dreamland Down Town, places all of the blame for the film’s failure at the feet of the studio. In 2016 she took to her Instagram account to write:
To this day it seems that the film’s director and main actors believed in the movie’s potential. It’s easy to see why they might think that too much monkey business on the part of the studio was the real reason behind the “Monkeybone” box office bomb.
