There's NO WAY you could raise $14 mill for that cast. I'm guessing the budget was more like $1.4 mill. Producers often overstate their budgets once they've wrapped to try to encourage a higher sale. But this is overdoing a bit!
They WERE meant to film this a couple of years ago but something happened to the ship coming to fiji. It costs alot for the shipping and it was all pretty professionally done here in fiji. 4 cameras, tons of crew... and i imagine the props were expensive too. 100 uniforms, 4 massive tents bout 75 beds, shower and toilet block and a house. Might not have been 14mil but it'd have to be more than 1.4
shareI'm no expert, but I know that more comes into play in bringing together the budget of a film than just big names in the cast. Second, it's not like this is some first-time indie director. He's not a household name or anything, but he has done some extensive TV work. And third, $14 million isn't exactly a huge budget these days. One of Duguay's other films, 'Human Trafficking', had a budget of $15 million and it was a TV film, not even a theatrical release.
By comparison, 'Disturbing Behavior', another movie about "at-risk" teens and the brainwashing used to bring them in line, had the same (estimated) budget, of $15 million (and that was almost 10 years ago). I'm suprised someone who'd make an 'in-the-know' comment like "Producers often overstated their budgets once they've wrapped to try to encourage a higher sale." doesn't know that.
$1.4 won't even cover the Hollywood-level production costs of a Sci-Fi channel movie. It seems excessive, I know, but that's just the way most non-indie film finance works.
I'm not so sure it will make it's money back theatrically though. 'DB' only made about 17.4 theatrically, and it had Katie Holmes as lead actress, and was released just as 'Dawson's Creek' was gaining popularity. 'That 70's Show' is still popular, but maybe not fresh enough to send people to the theaters just to see Mila. Depends on how well they market it, I guess.
Mmm there are doubts about how much profit it will make. You're right it does depend on how they market it.
I also reckon it'll depend how well they put together the story which has quite alot of potential. It's already being labelled as a cliche of so many other movies so it has alot of work to do.
Word-of-mouth will probably be very important - people seeing it then telling their friends to. Bringing it out in school holidays will also be a good move plus getting it to the lowest rating possible but that looks doubtful with a rape scene and quite alot of swearing.
Teenagers over 15 will have to be targetted and I reckon they will be fairly successfully however probably not strong enough toearn back $14 mil or however much the budget was.
According to Blueriderpictures website the budget was $13.8-million
share...Rounding..
shareif this gets dumped on DVD, which is what appears to be happening, I would sure hate to be one of the investors. As far as marketing and publicity, doubt there will be any.
I just finished watching the movie and thought it was decent. Too bad it can't have a limited run in theaters at least.
why is $14million hard to believe? The average USA movie costs $60million to make.
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What I don't get is why anyone would put 14 mil into this project with such a terrible script. The movie itself was pretty bad, but the dialogue was just .
share$14M sounds about right. You could maybe have made this for $8 million, but it would have really showed.
I was talking to a director about a piece of garbage he recently put out for $2 million. Cutting corners all the way; needed to do the entire shoot in about 4 days to stay on budget. Cast: one has-been D-lister and a bunch of unknowns cost $1 million. So, $1.4 million wouldn't get you very far, even in 2008.
For this film, if they had stayed in North America they could have probably made it for half the cost. The idea to go to Fiji must have been fricken expensive: no movie infrastructure there, unpredictable weather, wet, humidity, bugs, salt, sand.
People talk about burning down the set as a big expense. That set could have easily been duplicated 10 times on the island and no-one would have noticed. Each copy might have cost $10,000. Tiny expense. What's expensive is the crew and equipment. And I bet Mila Kunis commanded $2-4 million in those days.
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"For this film, if they had stayed in North America they could have probably made it for half the cost."
So there were 100 or so aspiring, perspiring wannabe young actors, mostly with nothing on their resume. If you were picked to be in this movie, as bad as it is, you were lucky enough there compared to most of your peers. You probably got whatever the SAG minimum wage/scale was, but you also got probably a couple of flights there and back, room and board, killer adult beverages, and great marijuana. All that could add up to $1,666,666.66 total. Maybe more. So yeah, I could see this costing in the several millions. Not a lot of acting involved here and it may have been a blast to make.