PHANTOM

Phantom

RCR Media financed Phantom for $18 million and K5 Intl. sold foreign territories, which wasn’t more than a handful of them. The submarine thriller staring Ed Harris and David Duchovny grossed just over $100k outside of the US. RCR originally tapped Sony to distribute the pic’s domestic release, but RCR Media ended up self distributing Phantom in the US and went big with a 1,118 screen release — which opened to a disastrous $508,000, posting one of the worst per screen averages of all time at $454 for the weekend — placing far outside the top 10 at #23. Phantom’s theater count was reduced to 407 in its second weekend and posted an 88% decline in its second weekend with a $61,050 weekend and ended its run after just three weeks with $1,034,589. Self distributing would see RCR receive a small percentage of the gross from theater chains (Regal Cinema pays out only 34% to independent labels) and they would see back about $400k, which would barely put a dent in the modest marketing spend. Phantom went straight to video in most major markets, including the UK, Germany, Italy and Australia.