A projectionist from UltraStar Cinemas has revealed a rather huge error made with the distribution of Uwe Boll's latest cinematic endeavor, the BloodRayne adaptation featuring such well-regarded thespians as Ben Kingsley and Michael Madsen. The UltraStar employee explained that when he got into work last week, he noticed that the theater had received a copy of BloodRayne.

This seemed odd because his particular theater generally shows films aimed more at the arthouse set. "I didn't want to build this and put it in my theater," he said, so he checked up with UltraStar higher-ups. It turns out that a computer error resulted in the print being sent to 5,500 more theaters nationwide than was intended. "The computer that placed the order, instead of selecting just the correct theatres, it also selected 5,500 additional theaters, so they made that many extra copies." Whoops.

I asked how much each print costs, and he said that in total, it costs about $5,000 to have each set of reels delivered to a theater, meaning that as a very rough estimate the total costs incurred may be upwards of $27 million. "And that's 27 million that didn't go into production, didn't go into marketing, it's just expenditure that's sitting there," he said. "I mean, I know Ben Kingsley was in Ghandi, but nobody gets to just throw away that much money for nothing."

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that, according to Variety, the film is only showing on 985 screens, just over half of the original target of 1,900--and that's separate from the thousands of accidental extra copies. Now, the film is already millions in the hole and it earned only $1.2 million during its opening weekend, failing to place it in the top ten. Uwe Boll has had a lot of second chances, but might this spell the beginning of the end for the self-described misunderstood director?

news: http://www.shacknews.com

1/9/2006 5:28:13 PM

lol...somebody's gettin' fired

1/9/2006 5:32:47 PM

Hahahahahahahhhhhaaaaa.

1/9/2006 5:36:33 PM

holy cow

1/9/2006 6:06:58 PM

holy shit...
i mean, the movie tanks and they can blame him for that, but they can't reasonably blame him for the 27mil lost in production..
of course, they will...

1/9/2006 6:10:31 PM

i'm actually sorry that i saw this movie last weekend. it was that bad.

1/9/2006 8:59:19 PM

How legit is this source? Sorry, but things like this aren't simply "overlooked".

1/9/2006 9:26:24 PM

it's already getting pulled from the raleigh grande this week

1/9/2006 9:31:07 PM

Those numbers can't be right. There are only about 6,500 theatres in the country, so that would be mean that pretty much everything single one got a print of BLOODRAYNE. Also, it doesn't cost $5,000 to strike and deliver a print. The cost is probably closer to $2,000 if not less.

1/9/2006 10:42:20 PM

my friend tried to get me to go see that tonight. i told him [no].

1/9/2006 10:42:44 PM

friends don't let friends see bloodrayne

1/9/2006 11:42:57 PM

Did anyone else think this was like Sci-Fi Channel Movie and not an actually movie movie

1/9/2006 11:45:44 PM

^^^^ Haha, I didn't even think about that. There's no mention of it on Film Tech, either.

1/10/2006 1:50:27 AM

I didnt even know that this movie had already come out

1/10/2006 3:18:01 AM

the #'s may not be right.. but the story is legit.. there are theatres that have the print in house.. but aren't showing it because they never booked it.

^^ there's a few threads on filmtech that are talking about it

[Edited on January 10, 2006 at 10:14 AM. Reason : ]

1/10/2006 10:12:45 AM

Yeah nm I see it now.

1/10/2006 11:15:41 AM

This is awesome

1/10/2006 11:24:42 AM

Isn't Uwe Boll the guy who basically made bad movies on purpose just to get tax write-offs in Germany?


So how is an extra $27M in expenditures bad for him?


http://www.cinematical.com/2005/10/31/maybe-just-maybe-we-are-free-of-uwe-boll/

1/10/2006 2:38:01 PM