HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE

How To Lose Friends And Alienate People

How To Lose Friends And Alienate People was budgeted at $28 million and was majority financed by Aramid and the rest from Film4 and the U.K. Film Council. The UK film Council gave the movie $2.4 million in lottery coin and after the film’s poor worldwide total, only $16,000 or 1% was returned back to the Film Council. InTandem handled worldwide pre-sales and Paramount took UK rights. Paramount bid on the US rights, but were denied by InTandem who couldn’t come to terms. MGM ended up picking up the US rights for far below expectations at just $2 million and they partnered with Autonomous Films to finance a P&A spend.

MGM opened How To Lose Friends And Alienate People in 1,750 theaters over a very crowded weekend, where it was one of seven new releases — Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, An American Carol, Religulous, Flash of Genius and Blindness.. The film was a disaster, opening to an awful $1,430,294 — placing #19 for the weekend and was the worst performer of the new openers. Audiences didn’t like the pic anymore than critics and gave it a poor C+ cinemascore. How To Lose Friends And Alienate People fell a huge 69.2% in its second weekend to $440,066 and promptly lost most of its theater count. It closed its brief run with $2,778,752. MGM would see back about $1.4 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which barely puts a dent in the P&A spend. Paramount saw the film’s best results with a soft $7 million UK gross. The overseas total across multiple distributors was just $16.3 million and it went straight to video in France.