“The 13th Warrior” was, shockingly to me, one of history’s great box office bombs… budget was about $100 million in 1999, but it only made about $33 million domestically, less than that foreign. Counting marketing, it lost well over a hundred million dollars. I’ve never understood why this was so; it was a substantially badass movie, based on a Michael Chrichton novel (“Eaters of the Dead”) not long after the success of “Jurassic Park,” starring Antonio Banderas. It had Vikings fighting Neanderthals. What was not to like? Well, apparently the movie going public wasn’t interested. My ass was in the theater on opening weekend.
It had a DVD release, but never a valid Blu Ray. I’d be all over a 4K release.
5 responses to “Need a 4K release of this”
I saw it on opening weekend too. The speculation at the time was the title was kind of nonspecific, so nobody knew what it was about.
All John mcteirnan movies are worth a watch. This one was phenomenal
Neanderthals from where? And vikings? and why? The Cro Mags from Sliders make more sense, and that’s s a pretty low bar. I actually watched a lot of movies in the theater in 1999-it was a good year and never heard of this one. I’ll have to check the reviews.
In the book they were clearly Neanderthals, but in the movie they’re more Cro-Mag-ish. Their population lives in the mountains of Norway and have generally kept to themselves, but every now and then get kinda pushy. The locals think of them as generally legend until people start vanishing. The main character, Ibn Fahdlan, was a real historical figure, an Arab who visited the Vikings, but “Eaters of the Dead” meshes his account with the story of Beowulf. So what you end up with is a story where the main character *isn’t* the hero of the story (that would be Buliwyf), but mostly an observer.
I loved the book but I think it’s basically unfilmable; the novel is a detailed bit of historical analysis where a newly found manuscript is picked apart and it is suggested that Beowulf is an account of Vikings fighting Neanderthals; the movie is about Vikings fighting Neanderthals.
I thought it was a doomed effort, like turning Name of the Rose into a murder mystery