In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Rate Movie[Total: 9 Average: 1.4]
- Directed By: Uwe Boll
- Written By: Doug Taylor
- Release Date: January 11, 2008
- Domestic Distributor: Boll KG Productions (through Freestyle Releasing)
- Cast: Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, Burt Reynolds, Ron Perlman
Box Office Info:
| Budget: $70 million | Financed by: Boll KG Productions |
|---|---|
| Domestic Box Office: $4,775,656 | Overseas Box Office: $8,322,259 |
In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale marked the final Uwe Boll picture financed by a now illegal German tax shelter loophole. Boll’s tax shelter fund financed In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, which had his largest budget at $70 million. Despite those investors making money from the abysmal movies House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne, once the tax shelter loophole closed Boll would have to finance his future slate the old fashioned way — through pre-sales. And after In The Name of the King was a box office disaster like all of his previous movies, pre-sales would no longer be a viable option since distributors would not want to be involved with a director who helms not only crap, but crap that doesn’t sell. Boll instead went the very low budget route and raised capital from investors.
Boll landed US distribution for In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale by the rent-a-distributor Freestyle Releasing and his tax shelter also paid for the P&A expenses, which were $20 million. This cheap looking Lord of the Rings knockoff was dated for January 11 and was booked into 1,632 theaters. It bowed against First Sunday and The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie.
Boll, who had recently challenged numerous critics who were always slamming his movies to a boxing match and beat the shit out of all of them, did not screen In The Name of the King for critics. The reviews that eventually posted were as bad as they come. The picture was dead on arrival with $2,984,524 — placing #14 for the weekend led by the holdover The Bucket List. In The Name of the King sank a huge 76.8% in its second frame to $691,224 and was pulled out of all theaters after its second week with just $4,775,656. Major theater chains return only a small percentage of the gross (Regal pays out 34% to independent distributors for example) and Boll saw back about $1.8 million — which barely covers the cost of booking theaters and striking prints.
FOX released the film in Germany to a poor $2.4 million which posted the best numbers overseas and the film tanked everywhere with $8.3 million across numerous distributors. It was dumped straight to video in major markets UK and France. Home video sales were enough to spawn two even shittier cheap straight to video sequels.
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