The film's first wide weekend in release came to only 5.4M and the movie cost anywhere from $60-80M and the likelihood of its recouping its costs after that opening seems slim.

So what went wrong with Nine? Was it the marketing? Did the bad reviews doom it? Something else?

I read today that it was getting pulled from quite a few theaters.

When you think about it, the idea of a musical as Oscar bait is kind of ridiculous. The genre is more about style than substance (Even when it has substance), and suspension of disbelief. An entire is genre is routinely held up to expectations they can't live up to. Thus when people see it and it doesn't knock their socks off, it sinks. Plus, because they're propped up as being comparable to the dramatic heavy hitters, it ether 1) suffers from feeling lightweight by comparison, or 2) it feels more like homework than recess, and fails at both.

It's like, imagine if a comic book movie was released every December with Oscar buzz and a platform release. I guess, in some ways, it's like what happened with Watchmen on an annual basis.

Weinsteins and their falling empire.

was the film even advertised because I saw nothing.

It seems like it was pushed for Oscars like crazy, but probably that wasn't the case with promotion for the general public. Too bad, because those 2 trailers looked awesome and both songs used are great. I'm really dissapointed it won't make as much as it deserves, given the cast and the director.

I saw a tv spot or two...

The trailer was playing in front of many movies I saw and contained the best part of the movie, so I thought the opening would've been better. They probably should've released it wide a couple of weeks earlier as the promotion was the highest in early December. Tthe movie itself isn't nearly as good as Chicago; the songs outside a couple are simply not good enough, and the story is too disjointed.

The trailer made it look too arty/not mainstream enough.

Another movie that forgot to advertise the plot...

Nine basically needed everything to go right for it to succeed: VERY good reviews, strong Oscar buzz...basically Chicago. But it wasn't. Hard to sell a musical about an Italian film director that few casual moviegoers have heard of, without catchy songs, good reviews, etc.

This had Nicole Kidman so it wasn't going to do well. She's been in a huge box office slump. Other than The Interpreter and Cold Mountain, its been 8 years of box office disappointments since her breakout year. Here are her movies that were released in 600 + theaters and were not voice work:

12/18/09 Nine Wein. $7,954,528 1,412 $257,232 4
11/26/08 Australia Fox $49,554,002 2,721 $14,800,723 2,642
12/7/07 The Golden Compass NL $70,107,728 3,528 $25,783,232 3,528
8/17/07 The Invasion WB $15,074,191 2,776 $5,951,409 2,776
6/24/05 Bewitched Sony $63,313,159 3,188 $20,131,130 3,174
4/22/05 The Interpreter Uni. $72,708,161 2,814 $22,822,455 2,758
6/11/04 The Stepford Wives Par. $59,484,742 3,057 $21,406,781 3,057
12/25/03 Cold Mountain Mira. $95,636,509 2,802 $14,574,213 2,163
12/27/02 The Hours Par. $41,675,994 1,010 $338,622 11
2/1/02 Birthday Girl Mira. $5,142,576 1,000 $2,370,809 1,000

8/10/01 The Others Mira. $96,522,687 2,843 $14,089,952 1,678
5/18/01 Moulin Rouge! Fox $57,386,607 2,283 $167,540 2

That seems silly. You could argue lack of any appealing stars as one reason why it didn't take off, but it's not like it would have been suddenly successful had Kidman not been in it.

Well I wasn't being completely serious. My main point being she's been attaching herself to terrible box office performers over the last decade. She has become the female version of Ben Kingsley...

If Will Smith were in it = $$$...maybe.

Do you think Be Italian and Cinema Italiano are not catchy?