The Relic
- Rate Movie[Total: 27 Average: 3.4]
Box Office Info:
Budget: $40 million | Financed by: Mutual Film Company; Paramount; Polygram; Tele München, BBC, Toho-Towa |
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Domestic Box Office: $33,956,608 | Overseas Box Office: $14,068,304 |
Creative Artists Agency scooped up the theatrical rights to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s novel Relic in 1994, before its publication in 1995. The project began development at the newly formed Mutual Film Company and The Relic was their inaugural picture. Mutual inked an equity and distribution arrangement with three overseas companies (Germany’s Tele München, UK based BBC, Japan’s Toho-Towa) and each would invest and distribute in their countries. All other remaining markets would be pre-sold to distributors, limiting Mutual’s investment into the movie.
Mutual landed a domestic distribution arrangement with Paramount in 1996 and the studio also invested into The Relic. Paramount also had a co-financing arrangement on select projects with Polygram, which co-financed the production. In addition, Polygram was tapped by Mutual to handle sales to overseas distributors.
In the mid to late ’90s, horror studio fare was selling so poorly at the box office that in 1996, the fiasco The Island of Dr. Moreau was the highest grossing horror movie at just $27.6M domestic. Then three weeks before The Relic opened, Scream (1996) was released and ushered in a new era of meta, hip horror and became the top horror entry of ’96. As Scream was becoming a phenomenon with each passing week, the irony free, meat and potatoes creature feature The Relic was more in line with ’50s monster schlock and was tracking soft.
The Relic landed mixed reviews and bowed against other genre fare that would all compete for similar auds — Jackie Chan’s First Strike and the turkey Turbulence. Evita and The People Vs. Larry Flynt also expanded into wide release. The Relic surprised and won the slow weekend with $9,064,143 (narrowly selling more tickets than Scream). It had a very small second frame decline at 12.7% to $7,915,861 but then fell 49% in its third session to $4,008,970. The domestic run closed with a disappointing $33,956,608. Paramount would see returned about $18.6M after theaters take their percentage of the gross — below P&A expenses.
The Relic was expected to have a stronger international run after the soft stateside numbers, but it tanked in most markets and stalled with only $14M.
In a huge $50M broadcast deal with NBC, Paramount packaged the hits Face/Off, In & Out, Kiss The Girls & The Saint with the underperformers The Relic, The Rainmaker & The Ghost and the Darkness. Also packaged were the non-performers The Beautician and the Beast, Good Burger and Fairy Tale: A True Story.
Actually, “Evita” was #2 that weekend with $8.38 million in its first weekend of wide release, expanding from 18 theaters the previous week. “Michael” was #3 with $8.28 million. “Scream” was #4 with $7.44 million. Furthermore, the $4,327 per theater than “Relic” averaged, was dwarfed by the $11,905 per theater average that “Evita” claimed. Albeit, “Evita” was only at 704 theaters that weekend.
Actually….He didn’t say scream was 2nd.
Just that Relic in its first weekend slightly beat the other horror movie that was hot at the time and still several weeks in theaters.
*pushes eyeglasses up on nose*
I was just pointing it out.