THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING

The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising was financed for an estimated $40 million by Walden Media and FOX.  Both companies formed a partnership ‘Fox Walden’ that would co-finance and market the films and The Seeker was the first production under this arrangement.  Walden would set up the projects designed to be ‘event’ films and would take advantage of free marketing and exposure on all FOX owned channels.  Some of their free marketing was splicing movie scenes with footage of Galaxy soccer players on Fox Sports, which seems to be targeting the wrong demo and after a solid prints and ad spend, The Seeker opened with the second worst opening for a film playing in over 3,000 theaters.  The record holder was another Walden production Hoot (2006).  The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising was booked into 3,141 theaters, against The Heartbreak Kid and Feel The Noise.  It was dead on arrival with $3,745,315 — placing #5 for the weekend led by the holdover The Game Plan, which was also courting young boy auds.  The Seeker declined 40.9% in its second weekend to $2,212,955 and promptly lost most of its theater count.  Also at the time of release, it saw the largest theater drop on record, losing 2,338 locations.  The Seeker flopped out of domestic release with a mere $8,794,452.  Fox Walden would see back about $4.7 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would not even cover the cost of striking over 3,000 release prints — let alone any marketing or the budget.

FOX released the film overseas in most territories and the film pulled in terrible numbers from almost every market, totaling $22.6 million.  This was supposed to kickstart a new franchise based on a series of books.