GAMER

Gamer

Lakeshore Entertainment financed this $50 million action film and pre-sold Gamer, which would limit their exposure to this dud. Lionsgate acquired US rights and opened the film on the usually slow labor day weekend to a disappointing $9,156,057 — placing #4 for the weekend led by holdovers The Final Destination and Inglorious Basterds. Audiences gave Gamer a poor C cinemascore and the pic fell a steep 64% in its second frame to $3,293,055 and quickly closed its US run after 5 weeks with $20,534,907. Lionsgate would see back about $11.2 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would leave much of the P&A costs in the red. The film pulled in modest domestic numbers on home video making $16.7 million (less after resellers take their cut and manufacturing costs). Overseas, Gamer pulled in poor numbers across numerous distributors, with $2.2 million from France and Russia as the highest numbers and its overseas total was just $21.4 million. Gamer was dumped straight to video in Australia. This would begin a string of flops for Gerard Butler vehicles, which would be followed by Machine Gun Preacher, Chasing Mavericks and Playing For Keeps.