Why Dolittle Just Disastrously Flopped

2. The Wrong Tone

Way back in fall of 2018, according to THR, Universal Studios executives saw the first cut of and immediately identified the issues. Primarily, it wasn't funny and far stranger, it didn't include anything like the amount of CGI they had expected it to. It also came with a downer ending, because everyone knows that's what the family audience wants to see.

Flash forward a couple of years, after the reshoots and presumably, the studio were happy to accept that adding a constipated dragon to punch-up "a morose father-son story" was a good idea.

It could actually have been different, because Seth Rogen was lined up to be the man to fix things and he consulted on the reshoots before a scheduling conflict meant he and Neighbors co-writer Brendan O’Brien had to drop out. Their almost-hiring suggests that Universal had a very clear idea of what they wanted the film to be in tone and then they asked Chris McKay - who was then replaced by screenwriter John Whittington - and Jonathan Liebesman to put it together. They did not succeed.

Reshoots are a wholly normal thing for a movie this size, and Marvel proved time and again that it can actually make the end results better but Dolittle just became a bad case of "too many cooks in one kitchen" with the lack of one clear vision. That wasn't helped at all by the appalling script or the strange approach to story that seemed to suggest that the film never quite nails down what it thinks it's supposed to be.

Combine that with a huge level of creative control RDJ and his wife allegedly sought on set and you'll have a mess with neither adults nor their kids getting anything out of. It was Downey Jr who came up with the now-notorious dragon enema scene, having ripped up John Whittington's suggested rewrites. Apparently, the actor thought that was just the cherry the film needed.

And that's the problem with RDJ having had so much success in the MCU: he's now got to accept the fact that he cannot be the primary creative influence on his characters.

Tony Stark was lightning in a bottle and the circumstances of the actor coming to that role - when Marvel needed him to be the perfect candidate and he needed the role to revive his career - and then becoming such a founding stone of an entire shared universe will never happen again. Not ever. They bred certain very specific conditions for Downey Jr on set that meant he COULD control what he did in those movies, just as he basically had carte blanche to ask for however much money he required to do it.

In the end, the movie's horrible box office performance isn't helped by the fact that it could never have been cheap to make. The CGI was one thing, but amassing a cast of such huge talent doesn't come cheap either and an estimated budget of $175m and about the same thrown as good money after bad on the marketing campaign means you're looking at around $350m before it could break even. Again, the Cats comparison is pertinent, because that film cost around $90m before marketing and now looks like an absolute bargain.

An MCU movie with Robert Downey Jr in could make that with its eyes closed. A Dr Dolittle movie would always struggle.

[Continued: Page 2 of 3]