Well, what can we say about Grady Smith other than he pigheadedly refuses to believe DS wasn't a flop no matter how many people have tried to persuade him otherwise on EW's Web site - and not even when the person attempting the persuading was a fellow EW staff writer.
As for the Hollywood Reporter, they don't even have their facts straight. The foreign box office figure is way off - and we know that to be so because even though Box Office Mojo didn't continue to tally DS' foreign box office, they did continue to report it. But then it's sad to see what has happened to the state of reporting at the Hollywood Reporter (as well as Variety) these days. Who can forget how many times they described Vicki as a "waitress." And while maybe there is a very slight chance that in the script Vicki did somehow work as a waitress before going to Collinsport and that part was cut, from the way the film as we've seen it stands, there doesn't seem to be any impression or implications that was the case. Sadly, as some suspected back when the waitress reports were being circulated, it looks more like it was a case the writers of those reports jumped to conclusions based on the 1967 descriptions of Maggie from the original show, which was a lamebrained thing to do because some of the characters (particularly ones like Willie and Carolyn) were changed from their original series' counterparts, and it's not like it wasn't publicized that changes were being made to the characters. There would just seem to be no way around it that there's poor reporting involved at the Hollywood Reporter.
And it probably also shouldn't go without mention that both of those linked articles choose to ignore that back in September Tim Burton went on the record in the New York Times as stating that DS had already made its money back and then some - and that was while it was still playing in many foreign markets (as well as in (at least) Hooksett, NH in the US
). But then, despite facts to the contrary, there are still those who insist that the original DS was canceled due to low ratings, that NoDS was a box office bomb, and that the '91 DS was a ratings disaster, so what can you say?
The Depp/Burton Dark Shadows played in US theaters for at least 161 days/23 weeks!!
The Depp/Burton Dark Shadows is now out on DVD/Blu-ray!!