How To Lose Friends And Alienate People
Rate Movie[Total: 3 Average: 2]
- Directed By: Robert B. Weide
- Written By: Peter Straughan
- Release Date: October 3, 2008
- Domestic Distributor: MGM/Autonomous Films
- Cast: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Megan Fox
Box Office Info:
| Budget: $28 million | Financed by: Aramid; Film4; U.K. Film Council |
|---|---|
| Domestic Box Office: $2,778,752 | Overseas Box Office: $16,373,045 |
The budget for How To Lose Friends And Alienate People
was $28 million and it was majority financed by Aramid and the rest from Film4 and the U.K. Film Council. The UK film Council gave the movie $2.4 million in lottery coin and after the movie flopped worldwide, only $16,000 or 1% was returned back to the Film Council.
InTandem handled worldwide pre-sales and Paramount took UK rights. Paramount bid on the US rights, but were denied by InTandem who couldn’t come to terms with the low offer. MGM ended up picking up the US rights for far below expectations at just $2 million and they partnered with Autonomous Films to finance a P&A spend.
MGM dated How To Lose Friends And Alienate People for October 3, 2008 over a very crowded weekend, where it was one of seven new releases — Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, An American Carol, Religulous, Flash of Genius and Blindness. Reviews were awful and the film was a disaster, opening to $1,430,294 — placing #19 for the weekend and was the worst performer of the new openers. Audiences didn’t like the pic anymore than critics and gave it a poor C+ cinemascore. How To Lose Friends And Alienate People fell a huge 69.2% in its second frame to $440,066 and promptly lost most of its theater count. It closed its brief run with $2,778,752. MGM would see back about $1.4 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which barely puts a dent in the P&A spend.
Paramount saw the film’s best results with a soft $7 million UK gross. The overseas total across many distributors was just $16.3 million and it went straight to video in France.
Instead it’s a very good movie!