SUSPIRIA

Suspiria

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  [Total: 17 Average: 2.7]
  Genre(s): Horror

• Directed By: Luca Guadagnino
• Written By: David Kajganich
• Release Date: October 26, 2018
• Domestic Distributor: Amazon Studios
• Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Grace Moretz
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Box Office Info:

Budget: $20 million	Financed by: Amazon; K Period Media
Domestic Box Office: $2,483,472	Overseas Box Office: $7,942,093

After Luca Guadagnino formed his First Sun production company, he spent seven months negotiating the remake rights for Suspiria from Dario Argento and his brother Claudio Argento.  First Sun announced the project at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, with plans for a 2008 production.  Guadagnino had interest in directing Suspiria, but at this point in his career he had only two low budget features under his belt and he could not land financing.

In 2008, Guadagnino was on the jury at the Turin Film Festival with David Gordon Green and he pitched Green Suspiria, who agreed to direct.  David Gordon Green had just landed a box office hit with Pineapple Express (2008) and Guadagnino expected the project would be easier to finance with an in-demand director, but funding stalled.  Eventually Green abandoned the Suspiria project to helm the flop Your Highness (2011).

Suspiria was put on the backburner while Luca Guadagnino honed his craft and racked up indie cred with I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015) and Call Me by Your Name (2017).  Eventually in 2016, Amazon Studios acquired the worldwide rights.  The budget for Suspiria was $20 million and Amazon co-financed the picture with K Period Media.   After filming was completed, FilmNation was tapped to handle international sales to distributors, which kicked off at the 2017 European Film Market in February.

Suspiria was scheduled to premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival in September 2018.  Days before the festival, FilmNation which was still repping the picture, sold most remaining major markets based off of Guadagnino’s acclaimed hit Call Me by Your Name — which had just completed its international run just a few months earlier.  Suspiria divided critics and audiences, which should be expected for an avant-garde, completely bonkers horror pic with major artistic pretensions, but overall the response leaned positive.

Amazon positioned Suspiria as a potential awards player and dated it for a limited bow on October 26 and an expansion set the following weekend.  Suspiria was booked into one theater in NY and one theater in LA and pulled in $184,037 with a massive $92,019 per screen average.  It expanded the following weekend into 311 locations and struggled at $979,882 with a $3,151 per screen average that killed off a further expansion.  Suspiria then sank 62.6% the following session to $366,600 and promptly lost most of its theater count.  The US run closed with a terrible $2,483,472.

The international run pulled in just $7.9M across numerous distributors.