Fox Searchlight Shitcans ‘Gentlemen Broncos’ Expansion

Fox Searchlight hasn’t been having the best year. “Whip It” was due to be their big breakout but it couldn’t even recoup its $15 million budget. They spent a pretty penny pushing “Adam” to only $2 million, “Amelia” stalled out as an awards contender, and audiences stayed away from the broad “Miss March” and “My Life In Ruins.” Some are saying there’s hope on the horizon with a rumored release of “Crazy Heart,” but that won’t be enough to rescue the ailing studio-indie it seems, as they’ve made a major move in completely canceling the nationwide expansion of “Gentlemen Broncos.”

“Broncos,” the latest from “Napoleon Dynamite” helmer Jared Hess, opened last weekend on only two screens, a puzzling release for a film that was never going to receive love from the arthouse crowd. It wasn’t roundly rejected, but its $6k per-screen average was a reception better suited for a sixty screen expansion, not the 500 screen release Searchlight was likely aiming for. “Napoleon Dynamite,” which had far less buzz, opened on six screens to $19k per theater in its release five years ago, and that was the core expected to show up for “Broncos.” The film only cost $10 million, but an expansion would likely be in the tens of millions, so this is cost-cutting with a significant loss to show for it.

Rotten Tomatoes registered a 15% Tomatometer score, while Metacritic scored it at 30, but we think this is a result of “Dynamite” backlashing. The picture’s not very good, but it has some charms, and especially inspired comic work from Sam Rockwell and, in the best performance yet from the Hess universe, Jemaine Clement. We’d be lying if we said it was worth the full price, but surely the movie deserved better than this.