THE FAILURE OF DOLITTLE
Posted: 031720

A recent article in THR explained the problems with the $175 million family fantasy film Dolittle and there were apparently a lot of them. Once Stephen Gaghan’s first cut was shown to executives and producers it wasn’t “family-friendly enough” and had very little humor or special effects. One viewer said the first cut “felt like a morose father-son story, and there wasn’t a big animal presence.” So the studio reached out to actor/writer Seth Rogen to help but he was busy so they reached out to LEGO Batman’s Chris McKay but he was offered the Chris Pratt film The Tomorrow War and so he passed. The studio then brought in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles director Jonathan Liebesman who helped Gaghan and Robert Downey, Jr. work on the film. Everyone got along fine. Downey was the one who came up with the idea of the dragon colonoscopy moment at the last minute for the film’s ending. But in one cut we saw Dolittle removing a boulder-sized stool out of the dragon but that was changed to hearing bagpipes and farts. Downey was open for any idea and added his won but the final product was all from the studio. The film is expected to lose about $100 million since it has only made $94 million worldwide before opening in the U.K. and China.

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