In the classic scheme of things, for a film to make headlines, it either has to bomb the box office with ticket sales, or the actors have to be famous enough to attract interest.
Of course, a familiar chassis is not the only road to fame and “Zyzzyz Road” is just one of the examples that have proven this.
The thriller, starring Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore, hit the press in 2006, setting the record for the highest-grossing film of all time. Compared to the $ 1.2 million the studio invested to make the production, “Road to Zayzaks” earned only $ 30 at the box office.
This means that only six people paid to see this movie in theaters.
The irony is that for everyone involved in filming, it’s a project they put all their passion into. Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore signed contracts for lower wages, and director John Penny (“The Walking Dead III”) worked overtime to perfect the vision down to the last detail.
The whole team liked the story. Katherine Heigl plays a woman who killed her boyfriend, Tom Sizemore helps her bury her body in the desert. But just when they decide they can get away with crime, they realize that the dead are indeed alive.
Okay, you might say it’s not the brightest script idea in the world. But even so, there are bands with a much more superficial concept that do great with bocosiffics. Why are the plans so messed up in “The Road to Zayzax”?
Recently, one of the stars of the ill-fated film, Tom Sizemore, shared his theory of failure with Entertainment Weekly.
According to him, “The Road to Zayzax” ran into the poor marketing strategy of the film studio, which wanted to target the title to international markets. The producers had planned to distribute the film first overseas and then in the United States, but the Screen Actors Guild quickly thwarted these intentions.
The association then stated that American productions must follow the rules, making their debut first in the domestic market and only later abroad.
The GoDigital Media Group production studio, however, was convinced they had found a clever way to get around this rule. They rent a movie theater in Texas and distribute the film ad-free.
As a result, only six people saw the premiere of Road to Zayzax, and the film was recorded as the lowest-grossing title at the weekly box office. From there, the media took the story as a curiosity and turned the tape into an object of international sarcasm.
Nothing can push audiences more successfully than a lack of viewer interest, thwarting GoDigital Media Group’s hopes of making a splash in international cinemas.
“I was reading what was written and I was like, oh my God, no! I did a lot of stupid things in my career. I saw a lot of things. But watching ‘my baby’ dragged through the street and beaten with the sticks was painful. It was brutal. It was ugly, “Sizemore shared with EW.
But “The Way to Zayzax” is not alone with the initial $ 30 earned. The film was rehabilitated a year later thanks to DVDs, which earned him $ 368,000.
However, to this day there are critics who say that if the original title – Zyzzyz Road – hadn’t sounded like a typo, the film would have had a better chance in theaters.
