JANE GOT A GUN

Jane Got A Gun

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  Genre(s): Western

• Directed By: Gavin O’Connor
• Written By: Brian Duffield, Anthony Tambakis, Joel Edgerton
• Release Date: January 29, 2016
• Domestic Distributor: Straight Up Films (through The Weinstein Company)
• Cast: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor
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Box Office Info:

Budget: $25 million	Financed by: Scott Pictures; Boies/Schiller Film Group; Straight Up Films
Domestic Gross: $1,513,793	Overseas Gross: $1,448,384

Jane Got A Gun had a long a miserable journey to its much belated release.  Lynne Ramsay was set to direct, but apparently she was never sent an approved shooting schedule, budget or script and her ‘final cut’ privileges would be revoked if the production went over budget or over schedule.  Her feud with producer Scott Steindorff led her to quit the project by not showing up to work on the first day of shooting.  The cast, crew and 175 extras were sent home.

Jude Law, who had replaced Michael Fassbender days earlier, immediately quit the project, citing that working with Ramsay was why he signed onto the movie.  Director Gavin O’Connor was signed the next day to take over the production and Bradley Cooper signed on to take over Jude Law’s role, but Cooper quickly quit to film American Hustle.  It was at about this point financing from foreign pre-sales unraveled due to the cast changes and uncertainty of the production getting back on track.

Before the pre-sale money evaporated, the rest of the budget was from producer Scott Steindorff’s new financing company Scott Pictures and banker Peter Nathanial and from Straight Up Films.  When the picture was about to collapse, the famed lawyer David Boies came in with a $15 million cash infusion from his Boies/Schiller Film Group, which would get the $25 million film to resume production — and Boies’ daughter was a producer on Jane from Straight Up Films.  When Jane Got A Gun resumed filming, Relativity Media and The Weinstein Co. partnered in acquiring domestic rights at the Cannes Film Festival — which is an odd pairing since Relativity sued The Weinstein Company over botching the release for Nine and both companies sued each other over the rights for The Crow remake.

The financially troubled Relativity delayed the release for the movie three times and as the mini studio was heading toward an inevitable bankruptcy, David Boies began to try to untangle the film from being a frozen asset.  One day before Relativity began Chapter 11 proceedings, Jane Got A Gun was released from Relativity.

The film was first set to be released in France in November 2015, but it was pulled after the horrible terrorist attacks and rescheduled for late January 2016.  For the US release, The Weinstein Company had no money on the line and received a fee for use of its distribution resources and booked Jane Got A Gun in 1,210 theaters.  Straight Up Films financed the penny pinching P&A spend, with the film not even widely screened for most critics and it had just 88 national TV ad spots going into release.  It bowed against Kung Fu Panda 3, The Finest Hours and Fifty Shades of Black.

Jane Got A Gun‘s opening numbers were a miserable $835,572 with a $691 per screen average for the weekend.  It placed #17 for the frame led by Kung Fu Panda 3.  The pic pulled in a mere $137,523 during its second frame, declining 83.5%, which was the 3rd largest second weekend drop on record.  Jane was pulled from all but 8 theaters going into its third frame and grossed $2,740 and closed after four weeks with $1,513,793.

Jane Got A Gun did not fare any better overseas, grossing just $1.4 million across numerous distributors and most of its offshore numbers came from France, which cumed $1,027,749.