When a high-profile $100 million movie flops at the box office Hollywood groans. When that movie has been directed by two of the hottest hitters in town, produced by the best in the business, filled with sex, violence and stars, and yet it still flops, then the entire industry panics.

Such is the case for Grindhouse , the new double-feature homage to 1970s exploitation movies, directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. The movie, a three-hour self-aware smorgasbord of genre action, zombies and killer cars, represents the creative apogee of the relationship between its directors and their long-time producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. (The movie takes its title from the down-at-heel venues that once specialised in sceening B-movies).

Tarantino and Rodriguez are the Weinsteins’ golden boys, responsible for such commercial and critical Weinstein smashes as Pulp Fiction , Desperado , Kill Bill and Sin City . These two — more than any within the Weinstein stable (which includes the likes of Kevin Smith and Anthony Minghella) — have given the producing brothers their brand identity as the masters of populist yet edgy “indie-wood” entertainment.

The shock was thus all the more profound when Grindhouse managed to turn in only a paltry $12 million (£5.9 million) from its opening Easter holiday weekend. Things got even worse last weekend, when figures revealed that audience members were walking out halfway through the movie, unaware that it was a double bill. Others were complaining about the degraded nature of the film footage (itself a nod to Seventies production values), while the movie was often playing to near-empty theatres (14 people per screening was the average).

How, pundits asked, can a moronic sword’n’sandals romp such as 300 make $400 million at the box office, while a smart cine-literate action parody such as Grindhouse completely dies? The New York Times suggested that this wasn’t the end for the Weinsteins, just a bump in the road. But Business Week announced that it should be a lesson for Hollywood, and that dumb audience-friendly movies such as 300 and Ghost Rider were the way of the future.

Naturally, the Weinsteins, who sank $100 million into the movie (an alleged $67 million in production costs, plus $30 million in marketing) have been forthcoming with their own mea culpas. The film was supposed to have been something of a flagship event for the brothers, the pivotal movie for their new independent Weinstein Company, established after their infamous split with the studio paymaster Disney in September 2005. Harvey Weinstein thus announced, directly after the first disastrous Grindhouse weekend, that it was all about timing, and a mismanaged marketing strategy. “We didn’t educate the South and the Midwest,” he said, before analysing the movie’s running time of three hours and 12 minutes. “Our research showed that the length kept people away. It was the single biggest deterrent. We originally intended to get it all in at two hours, 30 minutes. That would’ve been a better time.”

And yet, could there not be a problem with the movie itself, with its content? If there is, says the industry expert and author Peter Biskind, you’re not going to hear it from Harvey Weinstein. Biskind, who incurred the wrath of the brothers when he wrote the definitive Weinstein tome, Down and Dirty Pictures , explains that the delicate balance of power between the Weinsteins and Tarantino and Rodriguez means that the brothers cannot criticise their star directors. “The Weinsteins used to be famous for injecting themselves into the film-making process,” he says, “but they don’t do it with Tarantino and Rodriguez because those two directors are just too important for their company.” Biskind adds that, ironically, Grindhouse might have benefited from a bit of trimming by Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein. The movie, though entertaining, is a “fanzine parody” he says, dependent on special effects and car chases. “All the things we love about Quentin — the quality of the writing — seem to have suffered.”

At the same time, of course, there is also the very real concern over rising costs. Reports that the budget for the third Pirates movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End , has spiralled towards $300 million, will have worried producers, distributors and cinema owners. And the film is up against some stiff competition this summer: Spiderman 3 , Shrek the Third and the fourth Die Hard .

While costs are the bottom line for film studios, a director’s ability to bring in regular hits is also paramount. Witness careers such as that of William Friedkin ( The French Connection ), Spike Lee ( Mal-colm X ) and Peter Bogdanovich, all of whom have taken on TV work to secure enough ratings for another bite at the Hollywood apple. Like them, Tarantino will need to prove that he can make a low-budget sleeper hit again — much like his debut, Reservoir Dogs .

And it’s true that there is something insufferably esoteric about the whole notion of Grindhouse . Something that possibly turned away movie-goers in droves. The film-makers’ adolescent enthusiasm for low-budget exploitation movies is evident in the movie’s scratched film stock, shaky frames, comedy gore and even deliberately missing reels (a common occurrence, allegedly, in the heyday of grindhouse).

But is it all, perhaps, one big elaborate in-joke too many? Tarantino’s movie references have always been obscure — see The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in Reservoir Dogs , or Speedway in Pulp Fiction . But has he now, by nodding to Italian zombie movies and little-known Charles Bronson B-pictures such as Telefon , gone one reference too far?

Harvey Weinstein certainly won’t countenance such a thought, and has instead decided to split the two Grindhouse segments into separate recut and revamped releases, despite punishing test screenings in the US for this experiment last weekend. The European Grindhouse releases will thus start next month, with a high-profile Cannes debut for Tarantino’s recut Death Proof .

Tarantino, however, remains the king of pulp, and has nothing professionally to fear — he won’t be forced into making ignominious Brian De Palma-style euro-puddings such as Femme Fatale . Instead he is scheduled to direct, again for the Weinsteins, his Second World War movie that has been a decade in gestation, Inglorious Bastards .

Biskind suggests that the very public failure of Grindhouse might be just the humiliating tonic that the self-referential director so clearly needs. “I think now Quentin needs to get back to Quentin Tarantino films,” he says. “Enough with these parodies, these insider movies. He’s got to start developing real characters and getting back to the things that people loved about his movies.” And then he might even make the Weinstein brothers some money.

Grindhouse is scheduled to open here on June 1

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