PRIDE AND GLORY

Pride And Glory

Originally titled Manhattan North, the project was originally set up at Fine Line for an inexpensive $10 million in 1999. As the estimated production costs began to escalate, it moved over to New Line, with Hugh Jackman and Mark Wahlberg in talks to star. After the September 11th attacks, a project about corrupt NY cops was not a priority for the studio and they put it into turnaround. The project came back together at New Line and filming finished in 2006 with a budget of $30 million. New Line and director Gavin O’Connor sparred over multiple edits of the film and while post was mostly finished, a fall 2007 release date was set. At Cannes in May 2007, another NY police drama premiered, We Own The Night and Sony took distribution rights and committed big a P&A spend for a fall 2007 release. New Line got cold feet and it pushed back until March 2008. New Line eventually decided to not release the film due to pressure from parent company Warner Bros about delivering a hit after the disappointing returns on The Golden Compass. Director Gavin O’Connor blamed New Line chairman Bob Shaye for not having faith in the film and even tried to shop the film around to different distributors, but the asking price was the entire budget and every studio passed. The film was inherited by Warner Bros and its likelihood of seeing a theatrical release was grim, until Sue Kroll became the worldwide marketing chief in January 2008 at WB and she pushed for Pride And Glory’s release. The pic opened October 24th, 2008 in 2,585 theaters as counter-programming to High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Saw V and pulled in a disappointing $6,262,396. Pride and Glory did not have strong enough legs to break out and it declined 46.3% in its second frame to $3,363,452 and a steep 61.5% in frame three to $1,293,389. It ended its run with only $15,740,721. Warner Bros would see back about $8.6 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which wouldn’t even cover half of the P&A spend. The film was sold to numerous distributors overseas, which would limit Warner’s exposure of the budget. The overseas gross was a meager $15.4 million, with $3.6 million from Spain showing the strongest numbers. Domestic home video sales were $12.1 million (less after resellers take their cut and manufacturing costs).