Kevin Costner’s lowest rated film only happened because of the sixth sense and was a box office failure

Kevin Costner has had a string of critical failures alongside his most iconic successes, but the film is considered by many to be the worst of all time, the 2002 film. Dragon-flyborn directly from M. Night Shyamalan’s classic thriller The Sixth Sense. Director Tom Shadyac’s supernatural thriller (Liar, liar, Patch Adams) stars Costner as a doctor who is mourning the loss of his wife, who was seven months pregnant when she died in a landslide. His wife reaches him from beyond the grave through his patients who have near-death experiences, which ultimately leads to a brief supernatural reunion.

Dragon-fly fits into the suspense style of the time, alongside films such as Memory and The butterfly effect. Unfortunately, the film was so panned that it had very little impact on pop culture, so much so that it is now all but forgotten. Although some story elements overlap, it was the film’s marketing that was specifically modeled after The Sixth Sense in a very specific way.

Universal wanted to replicate the success of The Sixth Sense with Dragonfly

The fantasy thriller had similar genre elements

The concept of a doctor communicating with the dead certainly evokes The Sixth Senseand that was part of the dot com Dragon-fly. Universal’s ultimate intention was to replicate the financial success of Shyamalan’s thriller with Dragon-flywho played an important role in the film being made in the first place. The film originally had an estimated budget of $75 million, which scared off its original studio, MGM. While not unprecedented, it was still a huge investment on the part of any studio for something that wouldn’t necessarily be a tentpole.

Put VarietyUniversal planned to present Dragon-fly to the public in the same way as The Sixth Sense from a distribution point of view. Universal handled domestic distribution and tapped Spyglass Entertainment to handle overseas pre-sales of the film, just as they did in The Sixth Sense. This successful agreement a few years earlier gave everyone involved the confidence that Dragon-fly It could have been an equally big success, but that’s not how it happened, unfortunately.

Why Dragonfly was so poorly reviewed and failed at the box office

The film was considered boring and cliché

Dragon-fly is by far the worst-reviewed film Costner has ever been a part of, judging by Rotten tomatoes Tomatometer Score. With a dismal 7% on 125 reviews, Dragon-fly was criticized for being overly emotional, completely boring, and full of cheesy dialogue. Netflix’s James Rocchi dubbed it “Kevin Costner’s all-time low,” and all but a few critics seemed to agree. Interestingly, the Popcornmeter score is at 62%, representing a significant difference between the public’s perception and the perception of professional critics.

Regardless of what public reviews indicate, the box office was a huge disappointment. Dragon-fly couldn’t even recoup its $60 million budgetand ended up earning a total of US$52 million worldwide. The distribution deal between Universal and Spyglass Entertainment matched what happened with The Sixth Sense, but unfortunately, the film’s low quality was what made the difference between the two. While The Sixth Sense is an iconic thriller, Dragon-fly it barely registers with anyone except the most die-hard Kevin Costner fans.

Source: Variety, Rotten tomatoes