OLIVER TWIST

Oliver Twist

Roman Polanski’s version of Oliver Twist was financed for $61.4 million by RP Prods. in France, Medusa in Italy, Runteam in the UK and Etic in the Czech Republic. ICM coordinated the difficult financing arrangements. Sony picked up US rights and Oliver Twist would be the second film released through their newly revived TriStar unit. Lords Of Dogtown was the first pic released through the revamped TriStar just a few months earlier in June and it was a box office bomb. TriStar opened the film in 5 theaters with a soft $68,447 and a $13,689 per screen average. Instead of a slow rollout, Sony expanded Oliver Twist in its second frame to 779 theaters where it was dead on arrival with $888,721 and a dismal $1,141 per screen average. The film remained in 779 theaters in its third weekend and fell 53.7% to $411,790 and lost all but 98 theaters for it fourth and final week in theaters with a $2,080,321 cume. Sony would see back about $1.1 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would barely cover the price of striking release prints and none of the ad spend or their acquisition cost. Overseas, Oliver Twist showed mixed to poor results, grossing a total of $40.5 million across numerous distributors. The film posted a decent $8,958,005 for Pathé in France and partial financier Medusa distributed in Italy to a soft $5,014,686 and its UK gross was a soft $4,547,473. The film was dumped by Roadshow in Australia in June 2006 in 41 theaters and pulled in a mere $116,510. In 2007 Sony moved TriStar topper Valerie Van Galder to run marketing for Sony and the unit was merged back into the Sony fold. It was revived yet again in 2013 as a separate division run by Tom Rothman.