IMAGINE THAT

Imagine That continues the decline of Eddie Murphy’s star wattage and audience’s rejection of his family fare, after his 2008 film Meet Dave flopped.  Paramount financed the film for $55 million and after a modest, but still expensive ad spend, Imagine That opened in the US to a terrible $5,503,519 — when The Hangover led the weekend and holdover family films Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and the flop Land Of The Lost placed higher.  The pic saw a 40.2% second frame decline to $3,290,227 and then collapsed 71.4% to $942,273 and Imagine That closed with $16,123,323.  Paramount would see back about $8.8 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would not even cover half of their marketing costs.  Paramount released the film overseas in some territories and also through UIP (joint distribution with Paramount and Universal) to awful numbers everywhere, and the reported gross was just $6.8 million.  The next Eddie Murphy vehicle would be his last, the 2012 box office flop A Thousand Words, which was filmed back in 2008, but collected dust for four years to distance itself from Meet Dave and Imagine That.  Paramount Film Group President John Lesher and production President Brad Weston were fired a week after this flopped, because Paramount’s few in-house productions in the past two years were box office losers — including The Love Guru and Dance Flick.