SUNSHINE

DNA Films, Fox Searchlight and Ingenious Film Partners financed the $45 million budget (originally a $40 million project, before Danny Boyle went $5 million over budget) and Fox Searchlight distributed Sunshine in the US and Fox distributed in most overseas markets.  Originally Fox Searchlight was nervous about boarding the movie, due to its budget and FOX did not bid on rights because of their expensive adult geared space flop Solaris.  Sunshine was originally scheduled for an October 2006 release, but director Danny Boyle insisted only one vfx house (London’s Moving Picture Co.) work on the visuals, so he could have better quality control, but it slowed post production down so much, it came in behind schedule almost a year.  Sunshine was DNA’s most expensive and riskiest project and saw the film open in the UK with a soft $2,006,412 and it fell 56.3% in its second weekend to $876,871 and closed out its UK run with a disappointing $6,401,006.  The film continued to post awful numbers as the international release continued and pulled in just $28.3 million overseas.  Opening months after the film tanked in every market, Fox Searchlight dumped the film in US theaters in limited release in 10 theaters for one week and then would expand it to 461 locations in its second weekend.  An online marketing stunt of watching all of the scenes where the main characters die, did Sunshine no favors as Searchlight tried to make the sci-fi film resemble a Final Destination film as a last minute effort to confuse audiences into thinking the film was something it was not.  Sunshine pulled in $242,964 opening weekend, with a decent $24,296 per screen average, but went moderately wide against parent company FOX’s The Simpsons Movie in its second weekend and grossed a terrible $1,262,996 in 13th place for the weekend.  Showing no legs, Sunshine sank 64.5% the following weekend with $448,386 and quietly ended its US run with a dismal $3,675,753.