Jackie Chan doesn’t need to prove his status as one of the all-time great global movie stars. He could quit making movies tomorrow (or make fifty more movies and have them all be terrible), and his icon status would nonetheless remain firmly cemented. His talent and his commitment to his craft are undeniable, especially as he spent the bulk of his career doing all of his own fight scenes and all of his own stunts. And while an “Armor of God” scene almost put an end to Jackie Chan’s career, he continued to put his body and his life at risk in the decades that followed in the name of entertaining movie audiences across the globe.
Chan took some time to fully break through in the U.S., but once he did, it wasn’t long before he became one of Hollywood’s most popular A-listers. At the height of his clout as a movie star in the West, he helped to get Disney to spend nine figures on a remake of the 1956 sci-fi classic “Around the World in 80 Days,” based on the Jules Verne novel of the same name. It was a chance for Chan to remake a movie he was a fan of, to finally fulfill his dream of working with Arnold Schwarzenegger (who has a cameo in the film), and to further demonstrate his ability to lead big-budget Hollywood blockbusters.
Well, he certainly achieved those first two goals — the third, not so much.
The original is an Oscar-winning classic
After a silent short film in 1919 and a 1923 serial that served as a sequel, the first feature-length film adaptation of “Around the World in 80 Days” arrived in 1956. It stars David Niven as Phileas Fogg, a man who claims he can circumnavigate the Earth within eighty days. It being 1872, there were no cars or airplanes, so this seemed like a nigh-impossible task, and some of Fogg’s rich friends bet him that he wouldn’t be able to do it. Fogg gets his assistant, Jean Passepartout (Cantinflas), to join him on the journey, and the two go on a globe-trotting adventure wherein they meet interesting characters and see incredible locations as they bribe, barter, and sweet-talk their way into various shortcuts and modes of transportation.
“Around the World in 80 Days” was a big hit upon release and went on to be nominated for eight Oscars, winning for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best cinematography, best editing, and best score. Even more impressive is that it won best picture over heavyweights “The King and I” and “The Ten Commandments.” The movie also took home Golden Globes for best motion picture – drama, and best supporting actor – musical or comedy for Cantinflas. In addition, the film’s three-man writing team won a Writers Guild of America award for best-written American comedy.
The movie’s legacy is a bit more gray, however. It is sometimes considered one of the worst best picture Oscar winners, and the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus — which consists entirely of modern retrospect reviews — calls it “undeniably shallow” while giving it a fairly soft 72%.
The remake was one of both Jackie Chan’s and Disney’s biggest flops ever
Though there was a Three Stooges send-up in 1963 and the loosely inspired-by “Tweety’s High-Flying Adventure” direct-to-video movie in 2000, there wouldn’t be another feature-length film version of “Around the World in 80 Days” until Jackie Chan’s version arrived in 2004. In Chan’s defense, it was a project that had been kicking around since at least 1999 and saw several writers, directors, and stars come and go before things were finalized with Chan as Passepartout, Steve Coogan as Phileas Fogg, and Frank Coraci directing. Once things got rolling with this version, everyone involved had high hopes and boundless optimism for the movie — so much so that its $110 million-plus budget was already set before the film even landed official distribution.
It was ultimately Disney that bought in, and the studio set about heavily marketing the movie ahead of a prime June release date. The first sign of trouble came in the form of the reviews, which sported an overwhelmingly negative response mixed with so-called positive write-ups that could only manage to muster descriptors like “mildly amusing.”
But at the end of the day, all that really matters is what the viewing public thinks and whether or not they show up. Well, they didn’t — the film’s opening weekend tally didn’t even top $8 million. By the end of its theatrical run, “Around the World in 80 Days” only made $72 million. When factoring in marketing costs and everything else, it’s estimated that the movie lost about $100 million. This is a distinction that not only ranks “Around the World in 80 Days” among the hugest and most-forgotten Disney flops, but also among Jackie Chan’s own worst-performing productions where he was the headliner.
