Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Rate Movie[Total: 21 Average: 1.4]
- Directed By: Marc Lawrence
- Written By: Marc Lawrence
- Release Date: December 18, 2009
- Domestic Distributor: Sony
- Cast: Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, Elisabeth Moss
Box Office Info:
| Budget: $58 million | Financed by: Sony; Relativity |
|---|---|
| Domestic Box Office: $29,580,087 | Overseas Box Office: $55,700,163 |
Did You Hear About the Morgans? was first in development at Castle Rock in 2003 with Warner Bros set to distribute, but the project was put into turnaround. Sony eventually picked up the project and fast tracked it into production in 2008.
The budget for Did You Hear About the Morgans?
was $58 million and Sony co-financed this rom-com equally with Relativity. Sony distributed worldwide.
Before Relativity grew into a short lived distributor that went bust, CEO Ryan Kavanaugh was setting up massive slate financing deals with multiple studios. Dozens of wealthy investors would invest into these slates that would co-finance dozens of movies and the idea was that the slate as a whole would be hugely profitable, even if a few of the movies bombed. Relativity would be paid $1 million per movie, plus 2% of the gross — which is good for Relativity, but every slate Kavanaugh presented to investors lost money and most ended up in the courts for fraud claims. Ryan Kavanaugh is also the dipshit who bragged about cracking the code on figuring out what movies will be profitable before they are made through his predictive computer algorithm. If he applied the slightest bit of common sense to Did You Hear About the Morgans? it would have cost half the amount of money.
Sony dated Did You Hear About The Morgans? as their end of the year holiday picture on December 18, where it bowed against Avatar. It’s not hard to guess which film came out on top. Reviews were dreadful and it pulled in a poor $6,616,571. Morgans declined a modest 24.4% to $5,000,143 over the Christmas frame and it held on over the New Year’s session, falling just 1.4% to $4,932,338 — but the domestic run closed with an awful $29,580,087.
Overseas the picture fared a bit better, with Germany being the strongest market at $6.1 million, but the numbers were not nearly strong enough for the film to reach profit. The overseas total came to $55.7 million, bringing the worldwide haul to $85.2 million. Sony would see returned about $46.8 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross — which would not even cover the worldwide P&A spend. During the quarter financial report, Sony reported a profit, but the loss on Did You Hear About the Morgans? was large enough for it to be cited in the financial results.