Mariah Carey in "Glitter" |
HOLLYWOOD - All that Glitters is not box office gold, as Mariah Carey is likely to discover this weekend. After a forgettable cameo in 1999's The Bachelor, the songbird makes her starring debut in the Reagan-era R&B fantasy Glitter. Staying close to what she knows, Carey portrays an aspiring singer out to make it big. She has insisted, though, that Glitter is not autobiographical.
A distinct lack of harmony surrounds this vanity project. The first single from the soundtrack, the Cameo-sampled "Loverboy," shot up the charts only after her new label Virgin Records shopped it to stores at a bargain-basement price. Partly blaming work on Glitter, Carey then reportedly checked herself into hospital for exhaustion in July. Consequently, 20th Century Fox and Virgin Records pushed back the August releases of the film and the soundtrack to mid-September.
Recent history suggests that fans are willing to support such pop divas as Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, the late Aaliyah and, on rare occasions, Madonna when they turn their attention to the silver screen. But the apathy toward all things Glitter seems to run alarmingly deep. The soundtrack landed this week on the Billboard 200 at an unimpressive No. 7, selling only 116,325 copies. Last week's terrorist attacks certainly affected sales, but rapper Jay-Z still managed to debut at No. 1 by shipping 426,550 copies of The Blueprint.
That Glitter is the sole wide release this weekend should guarantee mild interest from non-fans who have had their fill of Rush Hour 2, American Pie 2 and The Others. Still, Carey should not expect Glitter to live up to its title.
Megiddo, the sequel to the Christian-oriented chiller The Omega Code, will open in a few hundred theaters. Thanks to its well-organized grassroots marketing campaign, The Omega Code managed to make a surprising $2.4 million in only 305 theaters in October 1999. It eventually made $12.6 million. The most recent Armageddon-themed yarn with Christian leanings, this year's Left Behind, made only $4.1 million. In all fairness, Left Behind hit 860-plus theaters after its highly successful direct-to-video premiere.