LEGENDS OF OZ: DOROTHY’S RETURN

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return

Summertime Entertainment secured the $70 million budget for Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return and through various means of unethical, but grey area legal fundraising, Ryan and Roland Carroll who run Summertime actually made a profit on one of the biggest flops of 2014. The two brothers reportedly fundraised the budget, promising massive returns from individual donors and kept over $15 million of the raised cash as their fee. For a more detailed write-up of their shady shenanigans, see this article from The Wrap. New distributor Clarius Entertainment, who had a terrible 2014, picked up domestic distribution from the questionable Summertime and Legends Of Oz: Dorothy’s Return would be their first film out of the gate. Clarius partnered with rent-a-distributor Freestyle Releasing for distribution logistics and booking. The 3D animated pic was tracking for about a $12 million opening weekend, but bombed with $3,747,780 in 2,658 theaters — placing #8 for weekend led by new opener Neighbors and coming in behind the animated Rio 2 in its fifth weekend in release. The film declined 47.8% in its second frame to $1,957,456 and promptly lost most of its screen count and closed its domestic run with $8,462,027. With new startup distributor Clarius receiving a small percentage of the ticket price (Regal pays out only 34% to independent distributors, for example) they didn’t see more than $3.5 million in returns — which leaves most of their modest P&A spend as a loss. Overseas the film pulled in a poor $11.6 million across numerous distributors and was dumped straight to video in Germany. Recorded domestic home video sales were only $1.8 million. Clarius released And So It Goes two months later, which did poorly and saw Before I Go To Sleep bomb far worse in October and they quickly ran out of funds and relabeled themselves Aviron Pictures in 2015.