SURROGATES

Surrogates

Disney financed this $80 million Bruce Willis vehicle, and the star would find his large budget career topping days in free fall over the next few years after choosing cheap paycheck projects. A week before Surrogates’ release, Disney Studio Chairman Dick Cook was fired from his post, after not seeing eye to eye on running the studio the way the studio’s chief executive Bob Iger wanted and also the slate of films that were greenlit — including the expensive flop G-Force the month earlier. After an expensive marketing campaign, the mouse house saw Surrogates open far below expectations with a disappointing $14,902,692 — placing #2 for the weekend led by Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Audiences didn’t like what they saw and awarded the film a toxic C cinemascore and it declined 51.4% in its second weekend to $7,241,054. Surrogates closed out its run with only $38,577,772. Overseas, the film fared a bit better for Disney with an $83.8 million cume, but it would not be enough to offset the poor US numbers. With a worldwide total of $122.4 million the mouse house would see about $67.3 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would neither cover the P&A spend or any of the budget. Recorded domestic home video sales were $17 million (less after resellers take their cut and manufacturing costs).