10 WTF Moments From WWE Studios
Triple H loves him some pickles.
At their worst, the movies from WWE Studios have a tendency to play up the weirdest parts of Vince McMahon's fever dreams; the type of stuff that occasionally pops up on RAW when the writing staff is too tired to try to reason with someone who signed off on Mae Young giving birth to a hand.
While these occasionally horrific ideas are easily glided over in the constant grab bag of storylines that makes up WWE's weekly episodic programming, it's much harder to overcome these failures when they're a major part of an actual movie.
Think of it this way: 3,000 jokes not landing over the course of The Simpsons TV show is the same as one not landing in The Simpsons Movie. It packs a bigger, more unfortunate whollop on the big screen.
And although WWE Studios is a relatively new company, with only a few dozen titles to its filmography thus far, the success rate of these films has been underwhelming, to say the least. And that could be because the quality is a little disappointing.
Or it could be that nearly every movie under WWE Studios is chalked full of WTF moments that make everyone wonder why they entrusted their movie viewing habits to a company that gave them the Gobbledy Gooker.
10. WWE Fails Aggressively At Family-Friendly Movies
The late-period PG Era of WWE (also known as the Universe Era) is a sharp contrast to its Attitude days. Whereas the Attidue Era favored blood and raunch, the Universe Era was about wholesome, sex-less entertainment.
Likewise, their films took a sharp turn toward family-friendly at the turn of 2010. And it had a disastrous effect on their box office returns.
Knucklehead, starring Big Show as a dim-witted amateur fighter, grossed less than $9,000 WORLDWIDE. To put that into perspective, Hulk Hogan's major box office disaster from 1996, Santa With Muscles, still earned more than $120,000 in its opening weekend.
Their second attempt at obnoxiously PG fare, The Chaperone, faired a little better due to their use of Triple H as the leading man, earning around $40,000 worldwide. But it's still a pretty deep stretch to call that a success. Like, a Downward Dog yoga stretch. Both flopped pretty hard on the home video market, as well.