THE MUSKETEER

The Musketeer

The Musketeer was budgeted at $42 million and co-financed by the German tax shelter fund ApolloMedia, Crystal Sky, Luxembourg based The Carousel Picture Company, some capital from the Luxembourg Film Fund and MDP handled international sales to distributors to cover the bulk of the production costs. ApolloMedia and Carousel would also partner on the awful bombs Fear Dot Com, Extreme Ops and George And The Dragon. Universal acquired domestic rights when the picture was still in post-production in April 2001 for a very modest $3.7 million and partnered with the UK rights holder Miramax to evenly split domestic and UK grosses.

Universal dated The Musketeer for release on September 7 against Rock Star, Two Can Play That Game and Soul Survivors. The Musketeer was very poorly reviewed, but managed to open #1 over the slow weekend with $10,312,740 in 2,438 theaters. Audiences disliked the movie as much as critics and gave it a terrible C cinemascore. The following weekend was the first frame after the September 11th attacks and the box office came to a crawl. The Musketeer declined 46.9% to $5,471,960 and had a modest 35.1% third frame drop to $3,549,955. The pic closed its domestic run with $27,073,640. Universal and Miramax would see returned about $14.8 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would not cover their P&A expenses or their minimal acquisition price. After home video and broadcast sales, the film was probably a wash for Universal.

The Musketeer was a total dud overseas, grossing $196,702 in the UK and pulling in less than $1 million in most markets. The offshore cume was just $7.5 million. Despite being partially funded with German coin, it was dumped straight to video in Germany.