BURNT

Burnt

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  [Total: 3 Average: 2.3]
  Genre(s): Drama | Comedy

• Directed By: John Wells
• Written By: Steven Knight
• Release Date: October 30, 2015
• Domestic Distributor: The Weinstein Company
• Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Daniel Brühl
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Box Office Info:

Budget: $32.7 million	Financed by: The Weinstein Company
Domestic Box Office: $13,651,946	Overseas Box Office: $22,954,797

Burnt was first set up at Sony before the project found its way over to The Weinstein Company.  It was originally titled Chef and pre-sales at Cannes happened at the same time Jon Favreau was pre-selling his Chef picture.  Sony sent a cease and desist letter to Favreau and the producers on the competing Chef title, but Favreau’s picture made it to market first and the title was cleared.  This Bradley Cooper vehicle was retitled Adam Jones, before being changed again to Burnt.

The budget for Burnt was $32,720,685 (as per records from the Louisiana film commission) and The Weinstein Company financed the picture and overseas sales limited their exposure to the budget.  In an interview with the NY Times, Harvey Weinstein said Burnt would have worked better as a January release, but his company’s board enforced that a certain amount of films be released each quarter and it was forced into its October slot.  The film was first dated for October 2 and then moved to October 23, where TWC planned on a limited release to spread word of mouth before going wide.  In early October, the limited release was scrapped and the date pushed back a week to October 30, where it opened very wide in 3,003 theaters.

The Weinstein Company gave Burnt a modest, but still pricey domestic P&A spend, with $12.3 million in television ads going into release and millions more in print, online, poster, virtual print fees, etc. — for a spend north of $20M.  Burnt was poorly received by critics and opened against the flop Sandra Bullock vehicle Our Brand Is Crisis and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.  It also saw competition from better reviewed adult fare The Martian and Bridge Of Spies, which were still playing strong at the box office.  Burnt pulled in a terrible $5,002,521 — placing #6 for the weekend led by the 5th frame of The Martian.  Burnt‘s opening numbers were the 4th worst on record for a film playing in over 3,000 theaters and it joined other recent adult targeting movies Steve Jobs and The Walk which struggled to bring in auds.  The film saw a 42.3% second frame decline to $2,887,029 and then sank 61% to $1,127,264 in its third session and promptly lost most of its theater count.  Burnt closed its domestic run with $13,651,946.  TWC would see back about $7.4 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross.

Overseas, Burnt pulled in $22.9 million across numerous distributors, with just $2.4 million from France as the highest gross.  This marked the third flop for Cooper in 2015 after the delayed and troubled Serena and the summer bomb Aloha.