Grindhouse: Divide and Conquer?

Tue., Apr. 10, 2007 1:49 PM PDT by Sarah Hall

A disappointing opening weekend may result in Grindhouse being torn asunder.

After Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's collaborative ode to B-movie slasher flicks took in a mere $11.6 million over Easter weekend, the Weinstein Co. is considering rereleasing the film as two separate entities—Tarantino's Death Proof and Rodriguez's Planet Terror.

Studio head Harvey Weinstein told Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke that he was "incredibly disappointed" by the movie's fourth-place performance, which fell far below industry expectations.

"We tried to do something new, and obviously we didn't do it that well," Weinstein told the popular movie blog.

Grindhouse blends the cinematic contributions of Tarantino and Rodriguez, shown back-to-back with fake trailers in between. The venture is intended to evoke the movie theater experience of a bygone era, complete with projection errors and "missing reels."

However, Weinstein contends that the studio didn't do its job in preparing certain parts of the country for the Grindhouse experience, despite dropping an estimated $30 million on marketing efforts.

"We didn't educate the South or Midwest. In the West and the East, the movie played well. It played well in strong urban settings. But we missed the boat on the Midwest and the South," he told Deadline Hollywood.

Another problem: the film's length. The combined features come in at a whopping three hours, 12 minutes, far longer than the studio had intended.

"Our research showed the length kept people away. It was the single biggest deterrent," Weinstein said.

(Of course, there's also the possibility that many filmgoers simply weren't up for excessive amounts of blood and gore over the holiday weekend.)

If the movie fails to gain box office momentum this weekend, Weinstein said the studio could divide the films and release them independently within the next couple of weeks, meaning that moviegoers who drag their feet may miss the opportunity to take in two features for the price of one.

The studio is already planning to release the films separately overseas and on DVD and TV.

"By splitting it up, we're going to do a hell of a lot better internationally than we did here," Weinstein told Deadline Hollywood.

That projection, at least, shouldn't be too difficult to achieve, given that Grindhouse's prospects for box-office redemption are relatively grim, especially with three new thrillers slated to open in wide release Friday.