^ It really is a mystery, but timing could have been the real killer. I mean, torture porn's almost on the way out the door, and you wanna release a 3 hour, 15 minute gore-fest on April 4th???
I guarantee if they'd opened the GH floodgates on October 1, it would have pulled in $70 million.
But they didn't. Spring is just a stupid time to sell horror IMO. The only thing worse is Christmas weekend.
But blame Rodriguez/Tarantino for that. It was supposed to be two 45-minute movies, and QT pulled another Kill Bill by extending it DURING THE SHOOT to a full-length movie. And because of delays like that they put the movie out in April, instead of 6 months earlier.
I think that's another reason too. Poor planning killed the eventfulness due to the constant delays. I mean, Wizard wrote up a special on the movie last August/September...whOOps!