25 Years Ago, Ben Stiller Buried Sylvester Stallone At The Box Office

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

"That was a big disappointment. I learned the hard way that [remakes], even if you do it better than the original, there's a tremendous nostalgia attached to the original." Those are the words of Sylvester Stallone speaking in 2022 about his massive flop "Get Carter." The "Rocky" and "Rambo" star also classified the movie as "underrated." That's all good and well, but there's no denying that, broadly speaking, it was a disappointment by nearly every measure.

"Get Carter" was a remake of the 1971 film of the same name by director Mike Hodges, starring Michael Caine in the title role. Caine isn't exactly viewed as a Hollywood tough guy, but it was Stallone who was in no small part responsible for creating the buff gun-toting hero archetype in the '80s alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. The heydays of the '80s were firmly in the rearview mirror, though.

To that end, it wasn't another muscle-bound action star that became this movie's undoing. Rather, it was then-up-and-coming funny man Ben Stiller, in concert with a surprising comedic turn by Robert De Niro in "Meet the Parents," that killed this remake's prospects.

In this week's Tales from the Box Office, we're looking back at "Get Carter" in honor of its 20th anniversary. We'll go over how it came to be, what was going on with Stallone's career at that time, what happened when it hit theaters, why "Meet the Parents" completely overshadowed it, and what lessons we can learn from it all these years later. Let's dig in, shall we?

The film centers on Jack Carter (Stallone), a vengeful mobster who sets out on a quest, scouring the underworld to avenge the murder of his brother. Caine returned, this time in the role of Cliff Brumby. The rest of the cast included the likes of Miranda Richardson ("Empire of the Sun"), Rachael Leigh Cook ("She's All That"), Alan Cumming ("GoldenEye"), Mickey Rourke ("Angel Heart"), and John C. McGinley ("Scrubs").

Stephen Kay, then largely known as a music video director, was hired by Warner Bros. to helm the remake, working from a script by David McKenna ("American History X"). Both the remake and the original were based on the book "Jack's Return Home" by Ted Lewis.

"The original script that came to me was very similar to the original," Stallone said in a 2000 interview with Hollywood.com. Stallone had luck adapting pre-existing material in the past, with "First Blood" based on the novel of the same name by David Morrell. But he and Kay did a lot of work on McKenna's script to help set it apart, for better or worse. As Stallone explained:

"[We] did a 99% rewrite. Take the essence of the book and try to make it fresh. Otherwise, why don't people go back and see the original? [...] I wanted you to feel as though some sense of good came out of all the bad. In the original, it starts off bad and ends badly for everybody."

The high highs that Stallone had experienced in the '80s and early '90s were largely in the rearview mirror. The mid-'90s saw cracks in Stallone's star power emerge, with pricey movies like "Judge Dredd" ($113 million worldwide) turning into massive flops. The misses were very much starting to outweigh the hits during this stretch.

Stallone found himself on the wrong side of the animated bug movie war of 1998, starring in "Antz" ($171 million worldwide), which was dwarfed by Pixar's "A Bug's Life" ($363 million worldwide). Even his acclaimed turn in 1997's "Cop Land" from director James Mangold failed to live up to commercial expectations, taking in just $63 million at the box office. Though not a flop, it was far from the big hit that all involved had hoped it perhaps could have been.

The point is that by the time "Get Carter" rolled around to help kick off Stallone's run in the new millennium, he needed a hit, but he was also still a little obsessed with playing a hero. Misfires like "Rocky V" and "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot" had started to weigh heavily on his shoulders. On paper, this remake offered a chance to get the actor back into a role that suited what he did best.

That is assuming that the remake was any good. Unfortunately, "Get Carter," as it exists," is not particularly well regarded, to put it kindly. The original might have been one of Michael Caine's best movies. The remake? Not so much.

While Warner Bros. was busy making "Get Carter," Universal Pictures had set up a comedy called "Meet the Parents." It had a lot of promising pieces on the board, with Ben Stiller very much on the rise following the huge success of 1998's "There's Something About Mary." Pairing him with Robert De Niro, who audiences knew as an all-time great tough guy in everything from "Raging Bull" to "Goodfellas," was playing against type in a broad comedy.

Then there's director Jay Roach, who was coming off the success of the "Austin Powers" films. While the first one was a modest hit, "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" made a shocking $312 million worldwide. Universal hoped to capitalize on a combination of rising stardom, paired with already beloved stars, along with a simple premise executed well. That premise involves Greg Focker (Stiller) meeting the parents of his soon-to-be fiancée, Pam (Teri Polo), so that he can get their approval. 

What nobody could have known at the time is that Roach was going to cook up some comedy gold that Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg put into the screenplay. Interestingly enough, Roach's comedy was itself a remake of a little-seen 1992 independent film, also titled "Meet the Parents." Not to spoil it, but the remake would go on to be the polar opposite of little-seen. That would prove to be bad news for the very different sort of remake that Stallone was starring in, which just so happened to be opening on the same weekend.

Warner Bros. set "Get Carter" for a theatrical release on the weekend of October 6, 2000. They needed it to perform in light of its reported $63 million budget. It just so happened that Universal also decided "Meet the Parents" would go on that same weekend. On paper, they could serve as good counter-programming. The problem is that Stallone's remake was maligned by critics, boasting a lousy 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. "Meet the Parents," meanwhile, proved to be a massive crowd-pleaser.

"Meet the Parents" handily won the weekend with a $28.6 million domestic debut, all against a slightly more modest $55 million budget. "Get Carter" had to settle for a distant third place with just $6.6 million. Disney's real-life football drama "Remember the Titans" ($19.2 million) landed at number two in its second weekend.

On weekend two, Roach's family comedy held onto the top spot with another $21.1 million, dropping just 26%. Stallone's action/crime flick, on the other hand, fell all the way to number eight with a mere $2.9 million. It only got worse from there, and the writing was on the wall. Universal had a breakout hit, and Warner Bros. was stuck with a costly flop.

"Get Carter" finished its run with $14.9 million domestically to go with $4.5 million overseas for a grand total of just $19.4 million worldwide. Or, less than one-third of its production budget. "Meet the Parents," meanwhile, finished with $166.2 million domestically and $164.2 million overseas for a whopping $330.4 million worldwide. For some added context, that was even more than "X-Men" ($296.8 million worldwide).

There were few – if any – silver linings for Stallone, WB, or Kay when the dust settled. Even though this was a far better time for the home video market, it's not as though people were rushing to Blockbuster to rent the film. Unless you're a die-hard Sylvester Stallone fan, there's no reason to 'Get Carter'on DVD," the L.A. Times wrote in February 2001.

Maybe over the years, this title has performed well enough in the studio's library to eventually make its money back. Even if that's the case, there's no denying that Stiller and De Niro got the better end of the deal. "Meet the Parents" became a $1.1 billion franchise, getting two sequels, with a fourth entry on the way in 2026. It helped cement Stiller as a bankable star and gave De Niro's career new life.

Stallone struggled for a few more years, eventually finding success by going back to the well with "Rocky Balboa" in 2006. Hits like "The Expendables" and "Escape Plan" soon followed, not to mention "Creed," which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. The actor has maintained that "Get Carter" is better than its reputation suggests, even attempting to connect it to one of his more recent, successful roles.

"It's interesting that 25 years ago I was acting in one of my BEST films, the underrated 'Get Carter,'" Stallone wrote on Instagram in January of this year. "Now that I look back at it, it looks like I was subconsciously preparing myself to play 'Dwight Manfredi' in 'Tulsa King' 25 years later! Let's just call it a prequel!"

Is it officially a prequel to Taylor Sheridan's "Tulsa King" series? Of course not. But that's Stallone's head canon.

The big lesson in looking at this box office showdown is that IP for the sake of IP is meaningless. Hollywood is more obsessed with pre-existing franchises than ever, but it only means that something of the ensuing movie is good. There are plenty of great remakes out there, just as there are plenty of bad ones. The original "Get Carter" is broadly considered a very good movie. Stallone's attempt to make a new version that didn't end "badly for everybody" didn't exactly pan out.

On the flip side, "Meet the Parents" took a good idea that didn't break through the first time and turned it into a juggernaut of a franchise. It was all about execution, with Roach's vision for the project resonating with general audiences in a meaningful way. There was the appeal of an emerging star in Stiller as well as an unexpected turn from an old star in De Niro. Stallone was just doing what seemed like more of the same.

At the end of the day, the big thing is that a good movie is a good movie. The box office is more uncertain than ever, and it feels almost impossible for things to break through, even recognizable franchises. While it's not always going to guarantee success, it was true 25 years ago, and it's true now; there is no substitute for a good movie. Inversely, it is tough to overcome a bad movie.