"The Promise" box office opens to $4.1 million over the weekend

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian Genocide drama starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, "The Promise" opened to just $4.1 million over the weekend at the North American box office over the weekend. At that rate, the film stands to lose $80 million or more unless it overperforms overseas and in ancillary markets, The Hollywood Reporter said citing box-office experts.

"The Promise" cost $90 million to $100 million to make before marketing costs and a distribution fee paid to Open Road Films in North America. Kirk Kerkorian, who died in 2015 and was of Armenian descent, fully financed the movie via Survival Pictures, which was created to make the movie and to educate the public about genocide in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The film's producers say the movie is a victory, its box office notwithstanding, since the intent was never to make a profit. Instead, "The Promise" was intended to shine a light on the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.

Any proceeds from the film will be donated to charity, including to the new The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law, which was unveiled last week with a $20 million gift.

The release of the film was timed to the date the genocide began: April 24, 1915. That was the day when Turkey's Ottoman Empire began rounding up, arresting and deporting Armenian leaders and intellectuals.

The Promise premiered Sunday in Armenia at a screening attended by President Serzh Sargsyan.