THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE

Things We Lost In The Fire

Financed for a modest $16 million by DreamWorks and released through their long standing distribution deal at Paramount, Things We Lost In The Fire had a soft ad spend in the US and it was tracking for around a $10 million opening weekend. On the day of its release Paramount sent out 6,000 award screeners, even though the response from critics was lukewarm. Things We Lost In The Fire was booked in a moderately wide release in 1,142 theaters and the market was congested with adult fare all competing for the same audience. Gone Baby Gone and Rendition were opening and holdovers Michael Clayton and We Own The Night were still going strong. Things We Lost In The Fire pulled in an awful $1,561,949 — placing outside the top 10 at #15 when escapist fare 30 Days Of Night and Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married? topped the box office. It declined a steep 53.1% in its second frame to $731,976 and was pulled from release after only three weeks with a total of $3,287,315. Paramount would only see back about $1.8 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would leave almost the entire P&A spend in the red and budget at a loss for DreamWorks. Overseas, the film saw a brief release in most markets, grossing just $5.2 million and $2.3 million of that was from director Susanne Bier’s home country Denmark — the decent Denmark gross was released by UPI (joint distribution of Paramount and Universal). Recorded domestic home video sales were only $3.1 million.