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What The Express really needed was Russell Crowe in the Dennis Quaid role

Kim Hollis: The Express, a Dennis Quaid movie about the first African-American player to win the Heisman Trophy, opened to only $4.6 million. Why do you think this sports movie failed when a number of other recent ones have succeeded?

Scott Lumley: When your only headliner is Dennis Quaid, you're not looking at a stellar opening weekend. However, when the only headliner is Dennis Quaid, it becomes a lot easier to make a profit. This is going to do about $18 - $20 million total and half of that (if not more...) will be profit.

Jason Lee: For myself, I blame the marketing of this film. If I had three words to describe the way it looked in commercials, it would be generic, generic, generic. There wasn't any clear hook to watching this film other than:

1. Race (first African-American guy to win . . . yada yada yada)
2. The guy, though very fast, never played a single professional game (insert suspenseful ominous music while audiences ponder his fate)

Those two are simply not enough for someone to plunk down $10 of their hard earned money nowadays.





Kim Hollis: Jason, I agree that an opportunity seems to have been missed with regard to marketing. I'm not sure what could have been done to make this look less generic, but there wasn't anything there that made me think, "Ooh! That looks interesting/inspirational/engaging."

Brandon Scott: This film had formulaic.com written all over it.

Sean Collier: Before you go check, no, formulaic.com is not a real website.

With exceptions few and far between, all sports movies are fundamentally identical. Underdog gets noticed and goes on to win in an unlikely fashion. That's it. Comedy, drama, whatever, that's pretty much it. You can't just make one and trust that it'll hit - there needs to be a star, a hook, or a recognizably famous story (more famous than this, anyway.) The Express just didn't have an x-factor.

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