Why was this film a flop??

Sometimes people just don't buy tickets to good movies.

Fortunetly, they buy DVD's.

No teenage girls, no hip-hop music, no vampires, no love scenes, no car chases, etc. etc. etc.

"I'm not reckless . . . I'm skillful!"

The 1960's generation no longer goes to the movies. JFK isn't the icon he once was to the younger generations.

In a sense, Thirteen Days was not a flop, but suffered as a result of an overbloated budget. It grossed, according to this site, $34,566,746 during its run from 2000 - 2001. According to IMDb, the following movies grossed these amounts: 1994 Quiz Show ($24,822,619), 2004 Kinsey ($10,214,647), 2005 Good Night and Good Luck ($31,501,218) and 2008 Frost/Nixon ($18,593,156). These all were excellent movies with excellent acting but they did not gross a lot of money. In comparison, Thirteen Days did quite well.

i agree that the younger generations don't want to spend their money on these type of historical based movies, with little action and no mind blowing special effects, and the people who lived during the times upon which these movies are based don't want to go to a theater to see movies about these types of historical events, especially when they know how they turned out.

Can anyone out there think of movies of this ilk that did well at the box office? The only one that comes to my mind is the 1976 All the President's Men which grossed $70,600,000. And that was in 1976 dollars. But it was also made just a short time after the actual events when people were interested in finding out what and who had brought down Nixon.

Simply because it told something of the truth and unless the Americans are seen to be whiter than white, they don't like it. It's unfortunate but just as the US is quick to dramatise, and film, major incidents relatively quickly after they happen (9/11, Bin Laden's death, etc.) they are also very sensitive to anything that shows that mistakes were made by them.

Fact - The Americans started the crisis by placing Jupiter missiles in Turkey, the Russians didn't like being held to ransom with missiles so close to their territory so they put weapons into Cuba to even things up. The Russians also had subs within the blockade armed with nuclear torpedos (All this can be verified with the non-fiction book 'Launch Pad UK' which tells the story from the British point of view through interviews with RAF and USAF personnel stationed in East Anglia at the time, where the missile silos were). One incident of heroism recalled was when a US boat dropped a depth charge amongst the Russian subs and in the communication breakdown from the Russian authorities, the Captain was about to launch his nuclear torpedos thinking that the exchange has started, but it was through the arguments of one senior staff member on the sub, and knowing he would be executed if he was wrong, that they waited until communications were up and it was revealed to have been a mistake on the US side. That staff member was praised by the Americans a few years ago at a National discussion on the crisis, as having 'stopped world war 3'.

In the end it was the Americans backing down and removing the Jupiter missiles from Turkey which ended the crisis. The UK was less than 15 minutes from launching and the only ones who knew were the operational RAF staff and immediate families, and the book tells of how one one RAF man went home to see his family to find his wife had given their children the Christmas presents as they knew within minutes of launch the Soviet missiles would have destroyed the Eastern side of the UK. It also tells of how the British didn't trust the US to allow joint use of the missiles so, frustratingly for the Kennedy administration, the missiles were fitted with a joint control system - basically the warheads could only be armed by the American Officers, but they could not launch the missiles as that was the job of the RAF and both specific access to those keys only. Worryingly it also tells of how surprisingly accurate the Russian topological maps of the UK were. It stunned the British that spies could have created those maps.

It's a fascinating subject to read up on and this films seems to be (although there are some reported inaccuracies of White House staff involvement) a fairly accurate representation of events. It was certainly a known fact that the US were perfectly happy with sacrificing the UK to Russian missiles in order to gain a first strike capability - which means if that had happened, I wouldn't be here today as my entire family would have been killed.

I think people have a unfounded dislike for Kevin Costner. 3 years after The Postman (1997), 5 years after Waterworld (1995) both of which (IMHO) are nowhere near as bad as people make out.

SpiltPersonality

Probably because this story had been told too many times before.

The unbelievably bad Boston accents killed it for me.