Posted by cinelune at sdn-ar-001nvlvegp260.dialsprint.net on July 20, 2000 at 15:09:09:
Kevin:
We've run into a problem which you'll likely appreciate, given your well documented history with "the suits." We're gearing up to commence preproduction on our revisionist vampire pic this fall. The financing instrument is in place, but the deal hinges upon foreign presales -- and the prospective foreign distributor is shitting their pants about controversial religious content in my screenplay. I've knocked off a handful of rewrites, each of which takes the content back a notch, but clearly, what they'd like to do is release a re-tread of John Carpenter's Vampires, or (worse yet) some Bram Stoker knockoff where the intrepid hero yanks the curtains down in act 3, catching the heretofore invincible vampire lord up past his bedtime.
What's that got to do with me, I hear you asking? Just this. The argument has come to a comparison of the foreign grosses of a handful of related pics -- Ninth Gate, Stigmata, Devil's Advocate, etc. While Dogma's clearly not a horror pic per se (opinions of certain conservative religious organizations notwithstanding), being last year's poster child for so-called blasphemy it has come up in the conversation.
I can't come up with figures for Dogma's foreign grosses in any of my conventional internet resources. That number will help me coax these nitwits out of their mental straightjackets, and help save all us movie buffs from yet another insipid vampire misfire (at least 3 of which are "coming soon to a theater near you").
How then, did your irreverent vision fare overseas?
All best,
Cinelune
(cineluna@yahoo.com)