Rules Don't Apply
| Budget: $26.7 million | Financed by: New Regency; Shangri-La Entertainment; RatPac-Dune; Considered Entertainment; Robson Orr Entertainment; Windsor Media; John Angelo; Worldview Entertainment |
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| Domestic Gross: $3,652,206 | Domestic Distributor: New Regency (through FOX) |
| Overseas Gross: Still in release |
Directed by: Warren Beatty
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Starring:
Warren Beatty
Lily Collins
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Produced by: Steve Bing
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Warren Beatty’s long in development Howard Hughes project was moving forward at Paramount, with co-financing from New Regency, but Paramount backed out in September 2011. Morgan Creek stepped in to fill the financial vacancy left by Paramount, but they quickly dropped out after negotiations stalled to reduce the budget from $47 million to $42 million. Morgan Creek also stopped development on all projects after their pricey disaster Dream House (2011) tanked and have not operated since. New Regency head Arnon Milchan kept Beatty’s passion project alive and arranged the financing through 15 billionaires and gazillionaires, at a reduced cost of $26.7 million.
A few of the entities and investors New Regency co-financed with were — Steve Bing’s Shangri-La Entertainment, RatPac-Dune (billionaire, foreclosure profiteer, scumbag and Trump appointee as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin), Jeffrey Soros’ Considered Entertainment, Sybil Robson Orr’s (part of Walmart’s Walton family) Robson Orr Entertainment, Terry Semel’s Windsor Media (the former CEO of Yahoo who passed on purchasing Google in 2002 and then botched a deal buying Facebook in 2006 and then was booted from his job in 2007), New York fund manager John Angelo (recently deceased) and the now defunct Worldview Entertainment invested $3,250,000 into the production. The consortium of investors, which has more wealth per capita than most nations, looks to have a small tax write off with Rules Don’t Apply.
New Regency paid for the P&A expenses and distributed through their long standing home at FOX. Rules Don’t Apply was Warren Beatty’s first screen appearance since his involvement in the legendary fiasco Town & Country (2001) and the last picture he had directed was the comedy Bulworth (1998). New Regency gave the movie a modest marketing push and invested $7.12 million into national TV ads (as per iSpotTV) and millions more into other marketing and distribution expenses. Rules Don’t Apply was dated for the Thanksgiving frame as a possible awards contender, but the lukewarm response from critics cooled off any heat the movie had. Rules Don’t Apply was booked into 2,382 theaters during a crowded holiday market and would compete for scraps against Moana, Allied and Bad Santa 2. The film opened with a disastrous $1,589,625 with a $667 per screen average. It placed outside the top 10 at #12 and the first weekend numbers are the 5th worst on record for a first run feature playing in over 2,000 theaters. Rules Don’t Apply plunged 65.8% to $543,058 in its second frame and promptly lost most of its theater count. It was pulled out of release after only four weeks with just $3,652,206. New Regency would see returned about $1.9 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross.
Rules Don’t Apply is scheduled for an overseas rollout in a few markets in the spring of 2017. The current offshore cume is a mere $95,844 from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. More as the numbers come in…