Under most circumstances, being delayed by three years and then bombing at the box office while simultaneously being torn apart from critics would be enough to secure a movie’s reputation in the cinematic hall of shame, but Tulip Fever ended up landing an even more ignominious place in the history books.
A star-studded period piece co-written by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard that boasted Dane DeHaan, Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Jack O’Connell, Cara Delevigne, Judi Dench, Zach Galifianakis, and many more among its ensemble doesn’t come across as a disaster waiting to happen, but calling Tulip Fever a catastrophe would be underselling it.
Production wrapped in the summer of 2014, but the film wasn’t released to theaters until September 2017, where it proceeded to land with a dull thud after recouping just $9 million against a 25 percent, with a 10 percent Rotten Tomatoes score making it look as though maybe director Justin Chadwick’s cursed passion project was better off being buried altogether.
Things somehow conspired to go from bad to worse, though, when the industry-wide allegations leveled against monstrous producer Harvey Weinstein saw his production company file for bankruptcy, leaving Tulip Fever as the last theatrically-released film to emerge with the disgraced mogul’s name attached.
All that aside, iTunes subscribers have suddenly decided that the 17th Century tale of a married noblewoman engaging in a heated affair with an artist at the height of the Tulip Wars has become appointment viewing, with FlixPatrol naming it as one of the platform’s most-watched titles. On the plus side, few will be aware of its unsavory spot in the annals of Hollywood.
