Did You Know This Beloved Movie Flopped Before Taking Off?

Published: October 22, 2024

Did You Know This Beloved Movie Flopped Before Taking Off?

Movieguide® Contributor

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE failed at the box office before it finally took off — just 40 years later.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE “is listed as one of the best films of all time,” filmmaker Andy Erwin said on Candace Cameron Bure’s podcast on Oct. 18. “It’s definitely one of the best holiday films of all time. It’s perennial.”

“The thing people don’t know about it is it was born out of tons of failure,” the I CAN ONLY IMAGINE director continued. “It was a short story by this failed writer that couldn’t get anything published…It was a bedtime story he would tell his daughter, and they would sit around and make up stories about George Bailey and this imaginary town of Bedford Falls, and he couldn’t get anybody to publish it, and so they were sending these little booklets over to the war, and he was a bookbinder by trade, struggling to feed his family, so he — on a whim — bound it up and sent it as a book over to the troops to read in World War II.”

That book wound up in the hands of filmmaker Frank Capra, who was documenting World War II.

“Then his star of a lot of his films he worked a lot with — Jimmy Stewart — and Jimmy Stewart was like the Tom Hanks of his day, and Jimmy Stewart was fighting for the U.S.,” Erwin continued. “I think he was fighting for the Air Force Army. He had a lot of post-traumatic stress, so these men came home, and he and this story finds them on the front lines, and he reads it, and he’s like this is my next movie. I have to make this movie.”

He comes “home to make the movie, and in it, they spent way too much money, and it was a box office flop. Bankrupted his company and just was considered a tragic flop…It just didn’t make enough money.”

The movie was received well, but timing and other factors weren’t able to bring about the desired result. It was also very expensive to make. The Bedford Falls set took two months to build and was one of the biggest movie sets of its time, spanning over four acres.

Jimmy Stewart’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE almost didn’t become the Christmas staple it is today.

READ MORE: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE ALMOST WASN’T A CHRISTMAS CLASSIC

“Years later in re-release, that Christmas, people start watching it, and it caught on in the early ’80s, and it became like beloved…As it began to be re-released at Christmas, people started watching it as part of their holiday tradition and it became a Christmas beloved classic. So it was out of a failure it was and…some of the most timeless stories are the ones that don’t work when they’re released but time tells what’s a great story.”

Erwin had a similar thing happen with his movie, WOODLAWN.

“WOODLAWN was one that you know my brother and I had chased our entire career; it was something we heard as a bedtime story from our father,” Erwin explained. “It was a true story that happened during the last part of integration in Birmingham, Alabama. Dealt with a lot of racial tension, and then the Jesus movement that we highlighted in the JESUS REVOLUTION hit this town and this school and led to the emergence of the first black superstar out of that school system.”

“This kid named Tony Nathan,” Erwin continued. “So it’s a prequel to JESUS REVOLUTION…The desire to go back and do JESUS REVOLUTION came out of this movie.”

The Erwin brothers were excited about WOODLAWN and had high hopes for its impact. But it was a failure from a box office perspective.

“I’m still incredibly proud of the final product, but when it was released, it just for whatever reason, same as IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, just timing. Like timing. It wasn’t connected to a book or something that people knew. It was this kind of original story that kind of got forgotten,” Erwin said.

“We had spent way too much money. It almost bankrupted our company…It’s the only thing that I’ve ever done that’s still in the red and I remember being done with that and being like ‘God, this is it.’”

Erwin even considered whether he needed to find a new career. However, he and his brother soon discovered the meaning and value of the movie, despite that it didn’t make enough money to cover its expenses.

“That’s where we found our voice,” Erwin said. “That’s why we tell true stories now. That’s why we tell stories of hope and underdog stories and people said, ‘Go once more around the block and find your story,’ and that’s where we found I CAN ONLY IMAGINE, and every bit of I CAN ONLY IMAGINE came out of WOODLAWN.”

“It’s still had a huge impact. [In] WOODLAWN we put a 1-800 number at the end for people that wanted to talk about faith,” Erwin said. “I got over 400,000 calls around the world. So like eternal things made it impact, but as far as like industry success, it was considered a failure.”

“So George Bailey’s moment at the end of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is all about perspective. He wanted to be a big deal and he wanted to go see the world but instead, he found out that he was truly important, and the importance was about the people he had impacted along the way,” Erwin said. “I think for me in WOODLAWN as an artist in an industry that’s very insecure, you wear your heart on your sleeve a lot and you sometimes are this like don’t criticize my work because you criticize me and you just like my values and what I do.”

But Erwin eventually didn’t care about any of that.

“All that got stripped away, as like, if I’ve got none of this, I’m still valuable to God, and I think in that there’s this stillness of surrender and of saying, ‘Okay, God, you know, instead of me doing this for me anymore, it’s too hard. I’m tired. I quit. What do you want to do?’ and I think that was the question I started asking.”

“I stopped saying, ‘God bless what I’m doing and I started asking God, ‘What do you want to do?’ and in that, God began to direct our steps and I think that was carved out of the humility that came from that.”

Movieguide® recognized and awarded WOODLAWN with a Teddy Bear Award® in 2016.

Erwin’s latest movie he helped produce through his business, Kingdom Story Company, is the Dallas Jenkins-directed holiday flick, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER, which releases on Nov. 8.

The synopsis reads: “Based on the beloved book, THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER centers on the Herdmans – absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. But this Christmas, they’re taking over their local church Pageant – and they just might unwittingly teach a shocked community the true meaning of Christmas.”