This Katherine Heigl Box Office Flop Is The Lowest-Grossing Movie Ever

John Penney's 2006 crime thriller "Zyzzyx Road" is named after the real-life Zzyzx Road, a tiny street that extends from highway 15 about halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The film stars Leo Grillo as Grant, a nogoodnik accountant who is enjoying a Vegas vacation when he runs into the flirty teenager Marissa, played by a then-rising Katherine Heigl. Marissa is dating the very jealous Joey (Tom Sizemore), and Joey attacks her and Grant in a fit of rage. In the fracas, Joey is knocked unconscious, and Grant immediately assumes that they killed him. They resolve to drive out to Zyzzyx Road to bury him in the desert. If movies are any indicator, the Mojave Desert is littered with the bodies of people accidentally killed during Vegas getaways.

"Zyzzyx Road" also features a supernatural element. Marissa may actually be a succubus in disguise. This suspicion, however, may be a hallucination that Grant experiences after being thwacked on the noggin. The film is, as one might intuit from its premise, incredibly low-budget, having been made for a mere $1.2 million. It was filmed in only 10 days, and the filmmakers bothered to shoot out near the actual Zzyzx Road. Heigl was just breaking through to the mainstream with "Grey's Anatomy" when Penney's film was being shot, and one might think that her presence would have led to decent box office receipts.

"Zyzzyx Road" became notorious, however, when Entertainment Weekly wrote about the film in 2007, pointing out that it only made — no exaggeration — only $20 during its theatrical run. Not $20 million, but 20 dollars and zero cents. Six people went to see it, each paying five-dollar matinée prices. Penney ended up refunding two of the tickets out of his own pocket, as they were purchased by the film's makeup artist, Sheila Moore, and her friend. He wanted to let them in for free. As a result, "Zyzzyx Road" was the lowest-grossing major release of all time.

The portrait in EW is extensive and explicit and tells how the film came to be. It seems that Grillo was looking for someone to listen to his pitch about a crime story set in the Mojave desert, and Penney was happy to listen. Penney had previously written a few notable horror flicks like "The Kindred," "Return of the Living Dead 3," and the late William Hurt's thriller "Contaminated Man." "Zyzzyx Road" was his directorial debut, and he knew it was going to be a modest affair. 

Shooting was brief, but it wasn't without incident. Sizemore, on probation at the time, had been ordered not to buy any drugs and was busted for possession. Penney knew that the actor had been in trouble with the law and was struggling with addiction but wanted to give Sizemore a break, recognizing his talent. Luckily, the local authorities allowed him to finish shooting his scenes. Also, rattlesnakes were an issue, and Penney had to hire a special snake wrangler just to keep them away from the set. Heigl, although playing a teenager, was 28 at the time and was reportedly very game. One scene required her to fall on the ground in 110-degree heat onto a rocky ground littered with cactus spines. She did the take 10 times and never complained. She and the production crew just removed the spines with tape. 

"Zyzzyx Road" opened at one theater, the Highland Park Village in Dallas, Texas. Penney four-walled the theater (that is: he rented it) for seven days. "Zyzzyx Road" screened once a day, at noon. As mentioned, six people went. Four, minus Sheila Moore and her friend, who got their money back.

One might wonder why "Zyzzyx Road" didn't premiere in Los Angeles or have a little more fanfare. It turns out there's a reason it had a tiny release: Penney was trying to avoid paying SAG-level salaries.

According to the EW article, Penney would have had to pay his actors a higher rate if the film never got a theatrical release. In order to circumvent the rule, he plunked down $1,000 of his own money to four-wall a tiny theater in Texas, just to say that, yes, "Zyzzyx Road" had the required week-long theatrical run. The film had to play, even if no one showed up. Six people came, but the film still screened seven times. According to Penney, he wasn't so concerned about a widespread North American release since he was still negotiating the movie's international distribution. He was able to get over $300,000 in European DVD sales and was so chuffed (and so busy) that he hadn't yet given any thought to a proper, studio-backed North American release.

Unfortunately, the fact that "Zyzzyx Road" only made $30 was noticed by the website CHUD.com and then subsequently reported on by Variety. Sadly, once the $30 gross was reported by the trades, "Zyzzyx Road" immediately became notorious. It was the worst possible press for a movie that was barely going to see the light of day as is. No one wanted to touch a film that had the reputation as the lowest-grossing movie of all time.

When "Zyzzyx Road" eventually reached the DVD market in Europe, it finally started to make some of its money back. The film was late released on DVD in North America in 2010 and was made available for digital download in 2012. Given its reputation, it's likely that "Zyzzyx Road" has at least broken even by now. And even if it had lost its entire $1.2 million budget, it still lost less than some of Hollywood's more notorious bombs. Just 2025's "Snow White" alone may have lost hundreds of millions of dollars for Disney.