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  Today a lot of the buzz in the Poker News is the fact that the new poker themed film, "Deal", made only $35,281 during its opening weekend. With an average ticket price of eight dollars, this means only about 4500 people went to see this movie. To put this in perspective, such Hollywood classics as Gigli, C.H.U.D., and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes had better opening days than Deal. Considering the fact that this film opened on fifty screens, it took some real effort to underachieve and raise the sort of money that fundamentally wouldn't pay for the movie's catering bill.



  So why can't poker movies get anything that resembles traction in movie theaters? Deal didn't exactly have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie acting in it, but it did have Burt Reynolds and Shannon Elizabeth, so it should have attracted more people based on that alone.



  There is the chance that the fact that Deal opens in a season where Iron Man and Prince Caspian are ruling the movie screens suppressed a lot of the turnout. Of course there is also the chance that a high cholesterol diet had something to do with the extinction of the T-Rex instead of that pesky asteroid. Let's call a spade a spade here, poker movies are just not very interesting. The gold standard for the modern poker film is Rounders. The difference is that Rounders would have worked whether or not the story was about poker, arm wrestling, or Chutes and Ladders. It was a good, character driven story that involved the sport of poker. Most of the recent poker movies start with the game of poker and shoe horn some characters and a story into it. Maybe they should turn that upside down and start with good characters and a tale.



  It may be too late to get it right. After a number of flops, Hollywood will probably not be willing to take a chance on a major poker film. We guess it will be up to the independent film makers to carry that flag in the future.