Free Christian Bale by Harrison Cheung Page B

the Hitler Youth before the outbreak of World War II. With a top-notch cast that included Kenneth Branagh and Barbara Hershey, as well as young stars Robert Sean Leonard and Noah Wyle ( ER ), Christian’s future was looking bright. He flew back and forth between L.A. and London to finish the ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) sessions on Newsies , and he eagerly awaited its opening weekend.
    Released in April 1992, Newsies was a huge flop. The critics hated the movie and apparently so did the public at large asit grossed a minuscule $2.8 million—an astonishingly small amount of money for a major studio release. It seemed that everyone connected to Newsies was covered in the stink of failure. Industry insiders joked that Newsies (now sneered as Flopsies ) was the Howard the Duck of the 1990s. Indeed, some Disney insiders claimed that two major bombs helped to end Jeffrey Katzenberg’s tenure with the Mouse House in 1994. One bomb was Newsies .
    The other? Swing Kids .
    David was filtering to Christian the few positive reviews and blamed Disney for not marketing Newsies aggressively, but it was very hard for Christian not to take it personally. His first starring movie role since Empire of the Sun was an epic dud. As his son’s manager and the guy who pushed the script, David was also very disappointed at the reception to Newsies .
    David had to search high and low for a good Newsies review. Typical reviews looked like this:
    New York Times’ Janet Maslin, who wrote: “The premise for Newsies , an elaborate Disney live-action musical about the New York newsboys’ strike of 1899, never sounded all that promising in the first place. But this film’s real trouble lies in its joyless, pointless execution. Many of the musical numbers are staged so strangely that the characters, when they begin singing, appear to have taken leave of their senses.”
    Critic Roger Ebert chimed in with: “What I find hard to believe, however, is that anyone thought the screenplay based on these actual events was of compelling interest. Newsies is like warmed-over Horatio Alger, complete with such indispensable clichés as the newsboy on crutches, the little kid, and of course the hero’s best pal, who has a pretty sister.”
    And Desson Howe at the Washington Post noted: “In some bright scriptwriter’s brain, there’s a musical that evokes the heyday of Rooney and Garland and stirs you up with song and dance. Walt Disney’s Newsies is not that musical.”
    Disney’s great endeavor to revive the live-action musical was over. Later that year Disney returned to more familiar territory—the animated musical—and released Aladdin (music by Oscar-winner Alan Menken, the Newsies soundtrack composer as well), which would gross $217 million in the U.S., $479 million worldwide. The Mouse had learned its lesson about live-action musicals. It would take another ten years before Australian director Baz Luhrmann would strike live-action musical gold with Moulin Rouge .
    Why did Newsies bomb at the box office? Many other Disney movies have been critic-proof and gone on to box office success. Some industry insiders pointed to the movie’s length. It seemed that after Kevin Costner’s success with his 1990 Dances with Wolves , every director—even a first-time director—wanted director’s cut. Newsies’ runtime: 121 minutes. By comparison, Little Mermaid ’s runtime: 89 minutes. Aladdin : 90 minutes. Pocahontas : 81 minutes. Newsies was even longer than Ortega’s favorite musical, the 1952 classic Singin’ in the Rain : 101 minutes. Newsies fans take great joy in pointing out the continuity errors, clearly the results of Ortega’s struggle to edit down his lengthy movie to two hours.
    Movie theater owners prefer shorter movies because they can have more show times during the day. A theater owner needs that time in between screenings to clean up the