THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

The Ten Commandments

Co-financed for $11 million by Promenade Pictures and New Zealand based Huhu Studio, The Ten Commandments was to be the first of 12 bible stories, which would be budgeted between $5 million and $20 million. Promenade covered the US distribution and marketing costs and released the CG toon through rent-a-distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures in 830 theaters to one of the worst wide release openings ever with $478,910 and a per screen average of $577 for the weekend. The poorly reviewed animated film (Christian Slater as Moses?) fell 64.2% in its second weekend to $171,465 and promptly lost most of its theater count. It bombed out of theaters after just four weeks with just $952,820. Promenade would receive only a small amount of the gross, (larger theater chains like Regal Cinema pay out only 34% of the gross to small distributors, for example) which would be less than $350k, losing the entire budget and the millions spent on prints and advertising. Overseas, the film saw a release in Australia to a terrible $56,355 and $42,518 in Singapore and made all of $214 in Hungary. It went straight to video in the few remaining countries it found distribution and killed off the 12 bible films planned, with an animated Noah starting production for $15 million, but no word if it has been completed or scrapped — just rumors of obvious financing problems. And Noah features the voice work of Jason Mewes and Rob Schneider, so Promenade is either run by atheists making these cartoons as a joke or their god sent their company into financial ruin as retribution.