FEAR DOT COM

Fear Dot Com

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  [Total: 6 Average: 2.5]
  Genre(s): Horror

• Directed By: William Malone
• Written By: Moshe Diamant, Josephine Coyle, Holly Payberg-Torroija
• Release Date: August 30, 2002
• Domestic Distributor: Warner Bros
• Cast: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier
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Box Office Info:

Budget: N/A	Financed by: ApolloMedia; Franchise Pictures; The Carousel Picture Company; Luxembourg National Film Fund
Domestic Box Office: $13,258,249	Overseas Box Office: $5,643,766

German based ApolloMedia financed FearDotCom with Franchise Pictures, Luxembourg based The Carousel Picture Company and 12% of the expenses came from the Luxembourg National Film Fund.  The budget for feardotcom that has been reported by outlets as $40 million, is miles off.  Feardotcom was written about in the same press releases as two other lousy ApolloMedia and Carousel movies Extreme Ops & The Musketeer both of which cost around $40M and that number became attached to this junk.  The cost of feardotcom was probably half of that amount.

MDP handled worldwide sales to distributors and Sony acquired foreign rights.  Co-financier Franchise had a domestic distribution pact with Warner Bros, which would handle the US release.  Feardotcom was one of many examples of the schlock Franchise was handing over to Warner Bros to distribute (others were Battlefield Earth, Get Carter, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever) who would soon pressure Franchise CEO Elie Samaha to apply some sort of quality control with their projects.

Warner Bros unloaded this stinker over the slow Labor Day frame and feardotcom received atrocious reviews.  It was booked into 2,550 theaters and pulled in $5,710,128 — placing #5 for the weekend led by Signs in its fifth week.  Audiences gave feardotcom a rare F cinemascore and it collapsed quickly at the box office, sinking 58.8% the following weekend to $2,352,359 and 58.2% in its third frame to $982,450.  The domestic run closed with $13,258,249.  Warner Bros would see back about $7.2 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, far less than their P&A expenses.  Four weeks after this opened, another Franchise byproduct City By The Sea flopped and two weeks after that WB wasted more distribution resources and money on the Franchise fiasco Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.

Sony didn’t do much in the way of pushing a release overseas, dumping the film in most markets — including Germany, where it grossed just $294,346.  The overseas total was $5,643,766.