Rules Don't Apply : Beatty does exactly as he wants (spoilers)

Rules Don't Apply has taken a lot of hits as a bore, pretentious etc. However you think of it, the movie is just what Warren Beatty wanted. For whatever reasons he has had sufficient Hollywood clout to get his films made, despite their poor box office. He has made his share of good bad and indifferent films like most actors who have been around long enough.

If Beatty made no other film after he made Bonnie & Clyde, he would be in the cinematic pantheon, because B&C completely changed what audiences could expect from the movies. (As did The Graduate, I might add.) B&C is about fifty years old and as fresh today as when it debuted.

Bugsy, Bulworth, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Shampoo, were all Warren Beatty films and they were exactly what he wanted to do. Heaven Can Wait and Shampoo made a lot of money and the rest were financial bombs and make of it what you will that Beatty can still get a film green lighted.

In the end, a great family man made a love letter to the importance of having children.

"Dick Tracy", "Reds" and "Bugsy" didn't bomb.
Dick Tracy cost 40 Millions and it made 103
Reds cost 32 and made 40
Bugsy cost 30 and it made 49


The "bombs" you're thinking of are "Ishtar" and "Town & Country".

The movies you cite were indeed bombs at the box office. They barely broke even with the PRODUCTION costs, which are just a percentage of the actual cost which also includes prints, advertising, marketing, and can be many times the production cost. Those films were not money makers by any stretch of the imagination.

Dick Tracy was one of the most successful movies of 1990.
You don't know what you're talking about.

Dick Tracy was a colossal bomb. They put in so much advertising dollars and tie-ins with McDonald's that they didn't even come close to breaking even. The studio tried to make Dick Tracy the next Batman, and it failed horribly.

Of course it was a bomb, a real vanity project of Warren Beatty's, along with tasteless trash from Madonna. Despite this dud, Beatty manages to get pictures made. At his age, will he ever produce another film, probably not. He is fairly well contented being the husband to Annette Benning and the father of their three kids. He is at the place, now, where Michael Douglas should be in about ten years. Although Douglas appears mostly on other people's films, not his own. (Like Beatty he finally settled down and entered a serious marriage (to Catherine Zita Jones) with kids thrown in for extra measure.)

It is in no way a bomb. If you read Katzenberg's widely seen memo, he stated later that year although the film was a large success, Mr. Beatty was too difficult to work with and such star/producer projects should be avoided. When Beatty himself got wind of the memo and was mad, Katz tried for years to apologize, even trying to produce Bugsy.
Beatty held on to the rights to Dick Tracy because the film was very successful, and he wanted (or maybe still wants) to do a sequel. Last I heard, he has spoken to Goslin and John Hamm about playing Tracy.

Katzenberg's memo was the typical studio self-serving propaganda. Katzenberg had to soft peddle the disasterous box office of the film otherwise he (Katzenberg) would have looked like a jerk (which he is btw) for going along with the Dick Tracy turkey.

He may do exactly as he wants and get any film green lighted, but it still has to sting when hardly anyone sees your movie in a theater.

This is easily his biggest bomb ever. After opening with $1.5m in 2,382 theaters four weeks ago, it's now in only 44 theaters and has made a pitiful $3.65 million.

At 79, the guy should just retire. He can't keep up with Clint Eastwood or Woody Allen, who are still sharp and work constantly.

My sentiments exactly. Before RDA's release, I was glad Bratty was given the chance to redeem himself, and to not have 'Town and Country' as the last film on his rsum. This one though, yikes! I was even able to enjoy Town and Country in a guilty pleasure sort of way.