The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2013
Universal spent 5 years and $175M turning a samurai legend into a $175M write-off
47 Ronin pushed its budget past $175M with reshoots and two delays, then opened to one of the worst debuts ever for a movie that size.
Universal Pictures · 2013-12-25
What happened
Universal Pictures greenlit 47 Ronin as a big-budget fantasy retelling of the classic Japanese revenge legend, starring Keanu Reeves and directed by first-time feature director Carl Rinsch, with extensive visual effects and physical production spanning three countries.
The studio approved costly reshoots partway through post-production, adding new scenes and dialogue to expand Reeves' screen presence, which pushed the final budget to a reported $175 million and forced the release date to be pushed back twice from its original November 2012 slot.
The film finally opened on Christmas Day 2013 to a $3.4 million weekend, the worst debut on record at the time for a movie budgeted above $150 million. It closed with $151.8 million worldwide, and Universal took a $175 million write-off on the project.
Why it happened
- The studio approved a first-time director on a $150M+ tentpole without a proven track record on that scale.
- Mid-production reshoots to reshape the star's role added cost without addressing the film's underlying story problems.
- Two release delays let costs keep accumulating while giving the market no earlier signal the film was in trouble.
- Nobody pulled the budget back in line even as reshoots and delays kept pushing it past the original plan.
The lesson
A reshoot meant to fix a film's problems just adds cost if the problems are in the script, not the star's screen time.
Aftermath
47 Ronin became a standard reference for how a runaway production budget can outpace any realistic box office ceiling, and it effectively ended Carl Rinsch's career directing studio tentpoles.
Sources
- 47 Ronin (2013 film) — Wikipedia
- The Hollywood Reporter — Box Office: Universal's '47 Ronin' Likely to Result in $175 Million Loss
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