Can the San Diego Comic-Con really make or break a movie? That’s a yearly question asked in the days leading up to the annual geekfest, and few experts ever provide a definite answer. Most people point to weak Con receptions of footage from ultimately failed films like The Spirit and Catwoman as proof of the event’s influence. Meanwhile, there’s the corresponding recognition that positive buzz at the Con for certain niche titles like Twilight and 300 led those films to boffo box office.

But despite the few times Con attendees have been on the same wavelength with the rest of the moviegoing public, it’s important to remember the many movies that had geeks excited in San Diego but which couldn’t garner much interest from mainstream audiences in theatrical release. After the jump, we take a look at ten such movies that buzzed well at Comic-Con only to fizzle at the box office.
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From the first scenes of The Wrestler, in which Maryse Alberti’s handheld camera follows Mickey Rourke from behind as his Randy “The Ram” Robinson goes through the closing motions of what we’re to understand is a typically trying day, director Darren Aronofsky announces that he’s picked up a new set of aesthetic references since his last film, the non-linear effects extravaganza The Fountain. It’s apparently impossible for contemporary directors to adopt the technique described aboce without someone suggesting that they ripped it from a film by the Dardennes brothers, but its use in The Wrestler feels very different from its use in, say, L’Enfant: it doesn’t produce the same sense of a tension that could break if the camera ever allowed its subject to get too far away. In fact, several times, the camera just stops while Rourke keeps moving, allowing us to appreciate the full physicality of the actor’s performance long before we ever see his face.

There must be a cerebral component to the way Rourke approached becoming the aging wrestler at the center of this film, because otherwise I doubt he’d have been able to so deftly navigate the character’s expansive emotional arc while still nailing all the jokes. But this performance goes way beyond the brain, or the precision with which Rourke transformed his appearance, or even the naturalism with which he performs the wrestling choreography. This is a performance that seems to start and end in the cardiovascular system, making everything Rourke actually does seem effortless. As if he’s just breathing it.

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There’s good news and bad news for Darren Aronofsky fans, reports Twitch’s Todd Brown from the American Film Market. The good news is that the filmmaker has overcome the financial disappointment of The Fountain to work again. The bad news is that he seems to have foregone personal projects for the time being in order to direct a movie about “a washed out WWF wrestler”, starring (gulp) Nicolas Cage.

Speaking, no doubt, for many, Brown says “the idea of Cage playing a wrestler fills me with immense dread of the existential, I think I’m about to begin a slow transformation into a cockroach variety.” But Brown also notes that the project bears the mark of Aronofsky’s personal production company, which would indicate that “this is not a for-hire job put on him from outside but something developed internally.” We shall see.