WHITE HOUSE DOWN

White House Down

Sony began development on White House Down in 2012, when they purchased the spec script from James Vanderbilt for a huge $3 million. Note to Sony: I have a spec script idea that is like Die Hard meets every other action movie since the 1980s and it is for sale for $3.1 million. Sony financed the expensive tentpole for a reported $150 million. The studio first dated White House Down for November 1, but moved it forward to June 28, to try to beat the similarly themed Olympus Has Fallen (which did not a have a $3 million spec script, but a screenplay written on toilet paper). FilmDistrict then dated Olympus for March 22 to beat Sony’s pic to release and Olympus turned into a surprise hit — turning White House Down into expensive sloppy seconds.

Sony heavily marketed White House Down and according to released documents from wikileaks, the studio spend $55.055 million on marketing, just in the US. White House Down bowed against the action comedy The Heat and there was a glut of action fare already in release that was targeting similar demos, with World War Z, Fast And Furious 6 and Man Of Steel. White House Down was tracking for an opening in the low-thirty millions, but came in below expectations with $24,852,258 — placing #4 for the weekend led by Monsters University. The Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx vehicle declined 45.8% the following weekend to $13,478,486 and fell 54.3% in its third session to $6,162,633. White House Down continued to post large weekly declines and ended its disappointing run with a less than blockbuster $73,103,784.

Overseas the all-American theme would limit the appeal and the film made $132,262,953, with $28,470,00 of that coming from China. In the Wikileaks hacked emails, Sony claimed the loss from White House Down in the financial quarter was $35 million. The failure of this film hopefully put a kibosh on how many more times Roland Emmerich can lay waste to the white house.