THE LOFT

Anonymous Content financed The Loft, which completed filming in mid 2011 and Dark Castle acquired the $14 million film from Anonymous Content back in 2012.  Warner Bros was set to distribute The Loft as per their distribution pact with Dark Castle, but WB and Dark Castle parted ways.  Dark Castle set up its new home at Universal and The Loft was dated for release on August 29, 2014 and then in June 2014, Universal removed the film indefinitely from their release calendar.  Open Road (joint distribution between Regal Cinema and AMC) eventually picked up the US rights for distribution and it was finally set for release on January 30, 2015.

Open Road spent an estimated $15+ million on 5,095 national TV ads (as per ispotTV), plus millions more in other marketing forms and the long delayed film was booked into 1,841 theaters over the usually slow Super Bowl frame.  It bowed against Project Almanac and Black Or White and The Loft was tracking for a soft $5 million weekend.  The pic was stillborn with $2,747,342 — placing #10 for the weekend, which was led by holdover American Sniper.  The Loft declined 47.3% in its second weekend to $1,447,948 and lost all but 245 theaters going into its third frame, where it pulled in $166,277.  It was pulled from release after only four weeks with $6,002,684.

Sierra/Affinity sold the foreign rights back in 2011 when the film was in post production and the film sat unreleased in the few territories it found a distributor.  The Loft, which is a remake of the Belgium film with same director, saw a late 2014 release in Belgium to $852,806 far below the original’s $8,416,814 — which was the most attended film in Belgium’s history.  The film grossed just $4,074,106 in the few offshore markets it found a theatrical release, across a few distributors and went straight to video in the UK and premiered on TV in Spain.