The Wild, Weird Rise and Fall of The Apple (1980): Behind the Scenes, Box Office, and Menahem Golan’s Big Swing

If you’ve ever seen The Apple, you know it’s not a movie you simply “watch.” You survive it, you tell your friends, and—eventually—you kind of treasure it. Conceived as a Faust-by-way-of-Euro-disco musical set in the “future” of 1994, The Apple was written and directed by Cannon Films co-chief Menahem Golan and stars Catherine Mary Stewart as Bibi, a singer tempted by an evil megacorp called BIM—Boogalow International Music. Shot in late 1979 in West Berlin and released in 1980, it’s since earned a cult reputation as one of the great camp disasters.

“Every Week He Came Back with Another Million”: How the Budget Ballooned

The chaos started early. Songwriters Coby and Iris Recht envisioned a modest $4 million musical. Once production shifted from London to West Berlin for subsidies, Golan kept scaling up. As Recht later recalled, “Menahem used to go like every week to Berlin and come back with another million,” until the budget swelled to roughly $10 million. Multi-camera coverage (five to six cameras per number), an estimated one million feet of footage, and an opening concert sequence that reportedly took five full shooting days all fed the sprawl. Choreography came from future American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe, who described the shoot as “really, really depressing on some days.”

Golan’s maximalist instincts produced wild detours, like the now-legendary, ultimately scrapped “Paradise Day” heaven sequence—replete with dinosaurs, problematic animal wrangling, and collapsing set pieces. Editor Alain Jakubowicz said the first assembly ran to four hours. Large chunks of the “heaven” storyline were cut to deemphasize overt religious elements and chase something Golan hoped would be more “accessible.”

Montreal Meltdown: When the Records Flew

The Apple premiered as the opening-night film of the 1980 Montreal World Film Festival, where attendees were reportedly handed vinyl LPs with songs from the movie. The night turned infamous: as the film unspooled, some audience members hurled those records at the screen, and boos filled the theater. Accounts from participants describe Golan as devastated—Catherine Mary Stewart has said he even contemplated jumping from a hotel balcony afterward, convinced audiences simply didn’t understand what he was trying to do. However apocryphal that last detail may sound, multiple retrospectives repeat versions of the story, and the record-throwing has been documented.

The Vanishing Box Office

Quantifying the flop is oddly difficult. While the budget is widely cited around $10 million, modern databases show no meaningful domestic gross recorded for the original 1980 U.S. release. Box Office Mojo’s page reports a token “worldwide” $602 from stray later bookings and nothing domestic—more a reflection of incomplete historical reporting than a literal tally. What is clear: after brutal reviews and poor word-of-mouth, The Apple largely disappeared from first-run theaters and only found life years later on midnight-movie circuits, home video, and streaming.

Inside the Creative Friction

The friction wasn’t only with audiences. Post-production was a battleground. Veteran editor Dov Hoenig, an ally of the songwriters’ original vision, was fired after clashing with Golan over focus and style; Jakubowicz took over and leaned into a fast-cut, music-video feel. Lythgoe and other department heads have said many on set disliked the script, but the project pushed forward at full speed, typical of Cannon’s “go-go” ethos. Even Bibi’s singing voice became a point of pragmatism: Stewart was dubbed by vocalist Mary Hylan to get the tracks where Golan wanted them.

Menahem Golan’s Big Bet—and What It Says About Him

Golan (1929–2014) was a force of nature: a pilot in Israel’s War of Independence, a tireless hustler, and the co-architect—alongside cousin Yoram Globus—of the Cannon Group’s frenetic 1980s output. He loved big swings: action franchises (Delta Force, Death Wish sequels), comic-book dreams (Masters of the Universe, a long-pursued Spider-Man), and, yes, an anti-establishment glitter musical meant to conquer America. Obituaries and documentaries paint a portrait of a man in love with the deal and the show, driven by instinct more than caution. When The Apple crashed, it didn’t slow him for long—Cannon would soon crank out dozens of films a year.

From Disaster to Cult Devotion

Decades later, critics routinely list The Apple among the “worst” movies—a badge that often greases the wheels of cult afterlife. Writers hail its maximalist “how did this get made?” energy, its shameless commitment to sequins and smoke machines, and the sheer audacity of a disco-gospel apocalypse that ends with a godlike limousine literally ascending to the heavens. Whether you find it insufferable or irresistible, it’s undeniably singular—one of those movies where every choice is the boldest possible version of itself.

Why The Apple Endures

What keeps people coming back isn’t that The Apple secretly “works” in the conventional sense. It’s that you can feel a whole team straining for pop-opera transcendence with absolute commitment, even as taste, timing, and tone collide. Golan believed fervently in the film; the crew shot like they were making A Star Is Born for a laser-lit dystopia; the dancers and singers sell every chorus. That sincerity—misguided, excessive, and louder than life—is why midnight audiences still sing along to “BIM” and treat the film like a glitter bomb to the senses. The Apple is a failure with a heartbeat, and that’s why it’s still alive.

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Sources: Oral histories and production details via Wikipedia’s extensively sourced page; festival and audience reaction accounts via /Film’s oral history; box office context via Box Office Mojo; background on Menahem Golan via obituaries and Cannon documentaries.

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Tags: The Apple (1980), Menahem Golan, Cannon Films, Cult Movies, Movie Musicals, Behind the Scenes, Box Office Flops