constant shifting of scenes clogged the action of the play". The film holds an 86% approval rating on the review aggregationwebsite Rotten Tomatoes, based on 42 reviews, with an average rating of 7.58/10. The site's consensus reads: "Perhaps less a true film than a series of star-studded vignettes, Grand Hotel still remains an entertaining look back at a bygone Hollywood era." Writing in 2009, Blake Goble of The Michigan Daily called it "the original Ocean's Eleven for its star power", and compared it to Gosford Park "for its dense structure and stories". He added, "[T]he pacing is quick, the acting is eloquent, and the stories are actually interesting. It's pure theatricality. But Hotel lasted thanks to its simplicity, and the star power doesn't hurt either. This is grand, old Hollywood captured on film." Box office Grand Hotel was a massive commercial success upon its release. According to MGM records, the film earned $1,235,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1,359,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $947,000. Aborted late 1970s musical remake In his memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade, screenwriter William Goldman recalls being contacted by director Norman Jewison about doing a remake of the film as a musical, to be set at the original MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas (now Bally's). It would also be filmed at the hotel, named for the film and opened just four years earlier, where MGM had not yet allowed any filming of its luxurious interiors. Goldman was very enthusiastic, since even though movie musicals were not very popular with studios or audiences at the time, he believed Grand Hotel could be an exception, recalling the classic Hollywood movie musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, with the real interiors of the Grand, never before seen on screen, as their setting. Goldman also worried that he was being seen too much as a screenwriter of thrillers and wanted to show that he was not a genre writer. MGM executives, initially cooperative, began to have second thoughts about the project once one of them remembered that Jewison had final cut in his contract, meaning the studio could not force him to make changes to the film before release. Goldman characterized their perception of the hotel as "Pristine. Unsullied. The diamond in the Metro crown", and believed they feared the film would not depict the Grand this way, instead focusing on the less glamorous aspects