Carroll Ballard’s Duma, a $12 million family film that’s won praise from critic Scott Foundas and a three-and-a-half-star rating from Roger Ebert, has been getting the brush-off from Warner Bros, according to this August 8th L.A. Daily News story by Glenn Whipp. The studio opened it in five Chicago theatres last weekend, and “if it does well, it will expand to other cities, including Los Angeles,” WB’s distribution honcho Dan Fellman told Whipp. Another little film getting the blow-off treatment is 20th Century Fox’s Little Manhattan, about a 10-year-old kid’s love for an 11 year-old girl. It’s set to open exclusively on its home turf, New York…fine. It’s standard procedure for a big studio to dump a little movie like this one (which Whipp calls “wonderful”), but you’d think Fox would at least do what they can to drum up business by showing it to columnists like myself. So far, I haven’t heard a thing from Fox about this.
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