Loser
| Budget: $20 million | Financed by: Sony |
|---|---|
| Domestic Gross: $15,618,626 | Domestic Distributor: Sony |
| Overseas Gross: $2,786,080 | Directed by: Amy Heckerling |
Starring: Jason Biggs Mena Suvari | Produced by: Twink Caplan |
Loser was financed by Sony for $20 million and was director Amy Heckerling’s followup project to her 1995 hit Clueless. When American Pie became a surprise smash in July 1999, Jason Biggs immediately signed onto two studio projects Loser and Boys And Girls — which he filmed simultaneously. His American Pie co-star Mena Suvari also top-lined this pic. Loser was designed as a R rated movie and according to Heckerling’s agent Ken Stovitz, he said “That movie was ruined in post. Loser was really good until the studio said, ‘No, you’ve got to make it PG-13 rather than R,’ and it ruined the movie. Just ruined the movie.” It was dated for July 21 and the first of the two interchangeable Jason Biggs comedies Boys And Girls was dated on June 16.
Loser bowed against What Lies Beneath, Pokemon: The Movie 2000 and The In Crowd. It would also be competing for auds against the holdover R rated comedies Scary Movie and Me, Myself and Irene. Loser was poorly reviewed and tanked with $6,008,611 — placing #8 for the weekend led by What Lies Beneath. Audiences gave the movie a crummy C+ cinemascore and it sank 55% to $2,705,545 the following weekend. It plummeted 76.5% in its third session to $636,586 and promptly lost most of its theater count. The domestic run closed with just $15,618,626. Sony would see returned about $8.5 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would not cover much of the P&A expenses or any of the budget.
Sony did not do much with Loser overseas and it cumed only $2.7 million.
In Sony’s quarter financial filing they wrote: “motion picture operating results this quarter suffered from the disappointing performance of Loser in the U.S. theatrical market.”
After the poor reception and box office of Loser, Amy Heckerling saw her studio offers dry up. She said: “Oh, I don’t like to even think about that one anymore. It certainly didn’t do me any good. [But] I look at the careers of a lot of men who have had much, much, much bigger flops than that and did not get treated the same.” She had to get financing outside the studio system for her followup I Could Never Be Your Woman (2008) and the picture was sent straight to video after the shady financier Philippe Martinez botched the distribution.