DUPLEX

Duplex

Back in 2000, Bob and Harvey Weinstein renegotiated their contracts with Disney to increase Miramax’s annual budget to $700 million from $450 million. With this influx of cash, Miramax was shying away from independent cinema to studio sized films and backed the Danny DeVito directed Duplex for an expensive $65 million. Miramax originally dated the pic for release in February, but pushed it to October 24, but then slated Scary Movie 3 on that date and moved Duplex up to October 3 and finally moved it forward a week to September 26. Duplex received poor reviews and was dead on arrival with $4,617,128 — placing #7 for the weekend led by new openers The Rundown and Under the Tuscan Sun. It fell 52% in its second frame to $2,214,920 and promptly lost most of its theater count. Duplex vanished quickly with only $9,692,135. Miramax would see back about $5.2 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which barely puts a dent in their P&A spend and leaves the budget in the red. Overseas, the film played poorly in every market. Disney dumped the pic in Australia, where it made all of $18,318 and France posted the highest offshore gross with a poor $1.2 million. The overseas cume was $9,630,000. DeVito’s back to back directing efforts of Death To Smoochy and Duplex ended his studio directing gigs.