Corrected entry: The movie was a financial and critical bomb when it premiered.
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Correction: While many viewers complained that the film was confusing and even boring, the critical reviews of "2001: A Space Odyssey" were mixed, with more than half praising Stanley Kubrick's monumental cinematic achievement as a landmark in filmmaking. Even the negative reviews acknowledged the movie's towering technical genius, while mainly deriding the flat dialogue, character development and puzzling final scenes. Negative reviews notwithstanding, the movie played continuously in theatres across the USA for over a hundred weeks straight and won numerous awards (including an Academy Award for visual effects, Bafta Awards for best cinematography, sound and art direction, and science fiction's Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation, among other awards) in 1969. Thus, it was far from being a "critical bomb," as asserted. Produced at a cost of $10.5 Million (a monster budget in the late 1960s and the most expensive movie Metro Goldwyn Mayer had ever produced up to that point), the film made back about $9 Million upon its release but went on to gross over $58 Million domestically and $12 Million internationally during its theatrical run, for a worldwide boxoffice of over $70 Million (or about seven times its production budget). Again, this was far from being the "financial bomb" you suggest.
Charles Austin Miller