What happens when you take an acclaimed director with several classics under their belt, a script based on one of the most famous murder cases in history adapted from a book from the author behind L.A. Confidential, and assemble a star-studded cast to tell the story? You get The Black Dahlia, one of the most disappointing would-be prestige movies in recent memory.
The prospect of Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible‘s Brian De Palma helming an intensely atmospheric investigation into the death of starlet Elizabeth Short was a tantalizing prospect, not least of all when the ensemble roped in Aaron Eckhart, Josh Hartnett, Hilary Swank, Scarlett Johansson, and countless others to bring it to life, but the results were crushingly underwhelming.
A 32 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 27 user rating smacks of a massive missed opportunity for a project that was originally touted as a potential awards season contender when it first started coming together behind the scenes, with The Black Dahlia‘s misery compounded even further by the fact it failed to even recoup its $50 million budget at the box office.
It goes without saying that streaming subscribers are more than partial to a slice of true crime every now and again, though, with the on-demand circuit giving the infamous missed opportunity a brand new shot in the spotlight. As per FlixPatrol, The Black Dahlia has sealed off the crime scene on the iTunes global charts, 16 years after failing to deliver on the undoubted promise it possessed during the buildup.
