MY SOUL TO TAKE

My Soul To Take

My Soul To Take was financed by Rogue, the genre branch of Focus, which was owned by Universal, for $25 million and this Wes Craven film finished filming in mid 2008. In January 2009, Universal sold off Rogue to Relativity Media for $150 million and Relativity was making the leap from co-financier of movies, to fully functional distributor. They inherited the title and issued re-shoots in mid 2009 and then slapped a 3D conversion on My Soul To Take and released it in US theaters on October 8, 2010 with a saturated box office of horror entries — two of which were released the weekend before, Case 39 and Let Me In (also distributed by Relativity) and both did poor business.

My Soul To Take was booked into 2,572 theaters against Secretariat and Life As We Know It and Relativity did not screen the movie for critics. At the time of release, it posted the worst opening numbers for a 3D film playing in over 1,500 theaters, bringing in just $6,842,220 — placing #5 for the weekend led by the holdover The Social Network (also co-financed by Relativity). Audiences gave My Soul To Take a miserable D cinemascore and it declined 53.7% in its second weekend to $3,170,310 and was pulled from release after only four weeks. It cumed just $14,744,435. Relativity would see back about $8 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would leave much of the P&A costs in the red.

After selling off Rogue, Universal agreed to distribute the existing Rogue titles ready for release in overseas markets and they would collect a 10% distribution fee. Universal dumped My Soul To Take in a small release in Germany and UPI (Universal and Paramount joint distribution arm) released in Spain, Singapore and Malaysia to about $400k total from those four territories. The film made the majority of its poor $6.2 million offshore gross from $4.2 million in Russia and it went straight to video in most markets.