Bon Cop, Bad Cop: Let's Be Honest, It's A Bomb

(Toronto) The headlines are blowing the horn of this Quebec feature which has now "surpassed Porky's" and is a "huge hit" and whatnot.

It's all bull.

The film has, to date, made a very handsome-looking $11.5 million Canadian. Of course, 90% of that is in Quebec.

Now, that sounds like a Canadian movie success, right? Well, it is not really. And here's why:Bon Cop, Bad Cop cost $8 million to make. It has cost over $2 million to advertise. It has cost probably at least $1 million for prints and other incidentals that come with releasing a feature, and probably $2 million is a closer guess in that department.

So, the fact is, Bon Cop, Bad Cop cost at least $12 million all together.

Now let's add that to the fact that the standard rule of thumb is that distributors only see 50% of box office take in return -- it's a very complicated formula, usually heavily weighted towards more take in the initial week and less in following weeks, but because it's so variable, the standard for calculation estimates is 50%. The other 50% goes to the theatre owners (exhibitors).

And, by the way, there will be no release of this film anywhere else on the planet, so it will not have anything like a chance at being the super-mega-100-million-dollar plus bonanza of Porky's and its sequels.

Anyways, what we have is about $6 million in the hands of the distributor for Bon Cop, Bad Cop. Now, things get complicated here, and it is really hard to say how much of that they keep, and how much the production company keeps, but, in any realistic model or possible scenario, the distributor will never get less that 50% of their "distributor's gross".

So the producers of Bon Cop, Bad Cop are left with a take of maybe $3 million on a film (so far) which had a budget of $8 million. They are in the hole $5 million for Bon Cop, Bad Cop right now.

But wait, if you're still with me, they aren't really in the hole, you and I the Canadian Tax Payers are in the hole, because it's mostly our money. So we have dished out at least $5 million for this piece of Canadian Culture called Bon Cop, Bad Cop. Probably several million beyond that, because we also flipped the bill for most of the marketing and promotion of it. A conservative esitmate would probably be a total of $7 million.

So Good Cop, Bad Cop has cost Canadians $7 million dollars so far. Which puts it about in league with Men With Brooms, probably. Another "secret bomb" hype job.

But it's a whole lot cheaper than another piece of garbage Atom Egoyan/Robert Lantos snore-a-rama that Canadians hate, at least. A whole hell of a lot cheaper.

Did you hear that? It's the sound of one hand clapping.