While promoting her new film The Hundred Foot Journey, actress Helen Mirren says she wished she could have done the film in French, but couldn't because Americans won't see films with subtitles.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mirren was excited to speak French on camera, noting that she speaks it pretty well.
In the film, Mirren uses what she referred to as Frenglish, which is essentially English with an accent and a few French words here and there.
Mirren says that she argued very passionately for the film using subtitles, and that she actually shot many of her scenes in both English and French hoping the final cut of the film would include some of her French takes.
In the end, Mirren says this was because the film is a Disney movie, and it simply wouldn't make as much money if it was in a foreign language.
Mirren has a point, and American audiences have been pretty reluctant to see films with subtitles. According to Box Office Mojo, the year 2000 was the last time foreign language films made up more than 1.5% of the American box office.
Some notable exceptions include films such as Inglorious Bastards, which made $120 million domestically despite large segments of the movie being subtitled. However, this may have been due mainly to the draw of Brad Pitt, and the fact that the foreign language aspect was not made clear in the trailers. Bastards experienced a 49.3% drop in revenue on its second weekend.
The Hundred Foot Journey opened in the United States last month and has made $40 million at the box office. The question now is, would it have made nearly as much had it been subtitled?
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