MEET DAVE

Meet Dave

Fox co-financed this Eddie Murphy flop with New Regency and Dune Capital for an estimated $60 million. The title was changed from Starship Dave to the generic sounding Meet Dave to avoid any comparison with the Eddie Murphy sci-fi fiasco The Adventures Of Pluto Nash. Meet Dave was tracking very poorly going into release and Eddie Murphy was a no show at the premiere, claiming he was filming A Thousand Words, yet the same director on both pics Brian Robbins was at the premiere. Not helping the lack of appeal for the high concept movie was Eddie Murphy on his press tour talking more about wanting to retire from movies than about the pic. Meet Dave had a disastrous opening with $5,251,918 — placing #7 for the weekend led by Hellboy II: The Golden Army, holdover Hancock and new opener Journey to the Center of the Earth, which took most of Dave’s family audience. The opening gross was the third worst opening for a film playing in over 3,000 theaters at the time of release and would begin the quick decent of Murphy’s star wattage, when he followed this dud with Imagine That and the long delayed A Thousand Words. Meet Dave dropped a huge 68.4% in its second frame to $1,659,424 and then set a record for the most theaters dropped, where it lost 2,523 theaters going into week 3. Meet Dave ended its US run with a miserable $11,803,254. FOX would see back about $6.5 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which wouldn’t even cover much of the P&A spend. Overseas, the film fared a bit better, but the numbers were still weak, with a $38.8 million total, with Fox distributing in most territories. Mexico posted the strongest numbers with only $4 million and the overseas total would not cover the P&A cost to release in most countries. After the failure of Meet Dave, New Regency said they would focus on more highbrow films and be the filmmaker friendly division on the FOX lot, though their output after Meet Dave reflects the usual commercial fare the studio churns out.