LOST SOULS

Lost Souls

Lost Souls was initially developed at Meg Ryan’s production company Prufrock Pictures in the mid 90s as a starring vehicle for the actress, but she vacated the lead role and remained as producer. Winona Ryder was cast and acclaimed cinematographer Janusz Kaminski signed on to direct his first feature film. New Line financed Lost Souls for $28 million and reduced their exposure to the budget by selling off most overseas rights. Filming completed in late 1998. The movie was first dated for August 27, 1999 amongst a glut of horror fare that other studios planned on releasing from August until the end of the year — including The Sixth Sense, Stir of Echoes and the similarly themed satanic nonsense of Stigmata and End of Days. New Line decided to push Lost Souls into February 2000, but the third Scream entry scared off New Line and they delayed it until October 13, 2000.

With over a year until it would reach the big screen, New Line commissioned reshoots for two alternate endings, but ended up scrapping them for what was originally shot. The studio then hired The Sixth Sense editor Andrew Mondshein to punch up the ‘boo’ scares in the pic. Because of the delay, the buzz for Lost Souls was poor and viewed as a problem pic and Winona Ryder was MIA for the movie’s promotion. Lost Souls bowed against The Ladies Man, The Contender and Dr. T And The Women. It would also have direct competition with the re-release of The Exorcist Director’s Cut in its fourth frame, which was doing fantastic business. Lost Souls received bottom of the barrel reviews and opened within its low expectations at $7,954,766 — placing #3 for the weekend led by holdover Meet The Parents. Audiences awarded Lost Souls with a very rare and truly hateful F cinemascore, which wasn’t so rare that weekend since Dr. T And The Women also landed an F. It sank 59.3% to $3,237,772 the following frame and declined 57.7% to $1,369,140 in its third session. The domestic run closed with $16,815,253. New Line would see returned about $9.2 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, far less than their marketing expenses and exposure to the budget.

Overseas, Lost Souls pulled in $14.5 million across numerous distributors. Janusz Kaminski planned on directing every few years, but after the critical drubbing of this pic and the poor box office, he went back to cinematography — which he is fantastic at.