In news that will shock absolutely no one, the latest film from Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst has been declared a bomb following its debut weekend.
Early last year, the world was treated to the news that Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst was heading back to the director’s chair, with plans to dish up a new movie starring John Travolta.
Called The Fanatic, it features Travolta as a dedicated movie fan who becomes obsessed with his favourite action star (played by Devon Sawa), until he begins to stalk his idol, eventually destroying their life.
Inspired by events from Durst’s own life, the film had its premiere over the weekend and the results were… not good.
Check out the trailer for The Fanatic:
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the film is something of another box office bomb for John Travolta, with a US gross of only $3,153 across 52 theatres.
Averaging only $60 per theatre (which means it only brought in about six people at each location), some theatres reportedly only grossed $10 or less, while its biggest pull was in Hollywood, where the Arena Cinelounge reported a gross of $736.
However, if you read the reviews of the film, such takings are barely a surprise. While NPR labelled the whole film a “miserable psychodrama”, Johnny Oleksinski of The New York Post gave it a one out of five rating, noting that “John Travolta’s new film is a lot like Misery — just without the acclaim.”
Over on Rotten Tomatoes, the film has scored its lowest rating of Fred Durst’s directorial career. While The Education of Charlie Banks and The Longshots boast rating of 47% and 41% respectively, The Fanatic is at the lower end of the scale, with only a 17% approval rating.
Still, Fred Durst shouldn’t be feeling too terrible at the end of the day. After all, the 2006 thriller Zyzzyx Road still boasts the lowest gross of a film to date, bringing in only $30, with $10 being personally refunded by the director to the film’s make-up artist, who viewed the movie with a friend.
If there is a silver lining to all of this though, we did recently discover that John Travolta is in fact an obsessive Limp Bizkit fan. Maybe all of this acting drew from his own personal experiences of listening to Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavoured Water on repeat?
Check out John Travolta praising Fred Durst as a director:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAm3OYxJi9k
