The 2008 movie 'Delgo' is an interesting case. The independently produced movie lost it's distributor (IIRC, 20th Century Fox) and to get the movie into theater

The 2008 movie 'Delgo' is an interesting case. The independently produced movie lost it's distributor (IIRC, 20th Century Fox) and to get the movie into theaters, producers used its advertising budget on a pay-for-play distributor. The producers hoped that enough people would be curious enough by the name on the theater's marquees to see it and then word of mouth would bring in the crowds. It ended up being the lowest earning wide release (2000+ screens) movie up to that time. It was estimated that each showing averaged two people. It wasn't a very good movie, which probably is why the distributor dropped it, but plenty of bad movies have made back their budgets off of advertising induced first week ticket sales before word of mouth sunk the long tail.