Cold Pursuit

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  • Directed By: Hans Petter Moland
  • Written By: Frank Baldwin
  • Release Date: February 8, 2019
  • Domestic Distributor: Lionsgate
  • Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Micheál Richardson, Emmy Rossum

Box Office Info:
Budget: $60 million Financed by: StudioCanal
Domestic Gross: $32,138,862 Overseas Gross: $44,280,893

Cold Pursuit 2019
The budget for Cold Pursuit was $60 million and fully financed by StudioCanal.   The company presented the pre-sale remake rights of the Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance (also directed by Hans Petter Moland) at Berlin’s European Film Market in February 2017.  StudioCanal took on distribution duties in their home markets the UK, Germany, France, Australia and New Zealand and sold out all but three markets at EFM.  No US deal was reached, but StudioCanal has deep pockets and was not reliant on landing stateside distribution before going into production.

At the 2017 American Film Market in November, Lionsgate acquired US rights to five projects from StudioCanal, which the companies announced as Cold Pursuit, a sequel to Shaun the Sheep, The Mercy and two other unidentified pictures in development.  Lionsgate dated Cold Pursuit for Feb 8, 2019.

Tracking was soft for Cold Pursuit, as Liam Neeson had been churning out revenge pictures for a decade and audience interest had been on the decline for his action vehicles.  Despite landing lukewarm reviews and being laced with dark comedy, the marketing for Cold Pursuit could not distinguish the movie as anything different from Neeson’s canon of post Taken movies.  Shortly before the release, a controversy played out after Neeson shared with an interviewer that 40 years ago he was ashamed of himself when a friend of his was raped and he began looking for revenge against black men.

Cold Pursuit bowed against The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, What Men Want and The Prodigy.  It opened within its muted expectations at $11,030,233 — which was almost exactly the same domestic opening for his 2015 flop Run All Night.  Cold Pursuit placed #3 for the weekend led by LEGOCold Pursuit did not hold particularly well enough to break out and declined 45.8% to $5,977,782 in its second frame and then lost 46.3% of its audience in its third session to $3,210,838.  The domestic run closed with $32,138,862.  Lionsgate would see returned about $17.6M after theaters take their percentage of the gross — below P&A expenses.

With Neeson’s drawing power waning stateside, he had still proven bankable in the international market with his previous picture The Commuter (2018) pulling in $83.5M overseas, but Cold Pursuit has been dead on arrival in most countries.  The current offshore cume stands at $40M and the release is mostly tapped out and won’t add more than a few million.  Spain is the last market scheduled to open at the end of June.  More as the overseas numbers come in…

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    • Well I’m actually hopeful “Cold Pursuit” will soon be on Netflix because it was a theatrical disappoint, because “The Commuter” is on Netflix and because it’s a remake of Scandinavian movie “In Order of Disappearance” that’s currently on Netflix.

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