Dinner for Schmucks Box Office: Paul Rudd & Steve Carell Comedy an Unappetizing Money-Loser

Dinner for Schmucks with Paul Rudd: Jay Roach’s comedy costarring Steve Carell went on to become a box office underperformer both domestically and internationally.

Dinner for Schmucks box office: Abetted by actors Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, director Jay Roach serves a commercially unappetizing comedy

July 30–Aug. 1 weekend box office (cont.): Trailing Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster sci-fi thriller Inception, DreamWorks/Paramount Pictures’ Jay Roach-directed Dinner for Schmucks, starring The 40 Year Old Virgin actors Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, earned $23.5 million from 2,911 North American (U.S. and Canada only) locations according to final studio figures found at boxofficemojo.com. Pundits had been expecting $27–$30 million.

The top movie on Friday, this poorly received Hollywood remake of Francis Veber’s 1998 French hit The Dinner Game / Le dîner de cons lost ground to the dreamworld of Inception during the weekend proper.

Reported budget: $69 million (as always, not including marketing and distribution expenses).

Comparison to Date Night

For comparison’s sake: Starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey, Shawn Levy’s comedy Date Night opened with $25.2 million last April and has taken in a solid $98.5 million in the U.S. and Canada, in addition to an acceptable (for a comedy featuring no major international box office draws) $53.6 million elsewhere. Worldwide: $152.3 million. Budget: $55 million.

Could Dinner for Schmucks reach these figures?

That’s unlikely, at least in the domestic market, as the box office longevity of the Steve Carell-Paul Rudd pairing may be curtailed by competition from other lowbrow fare like the upcoming Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg cop action-comedy The Other Guys.

Dinner for Schmucks cast

Besides Steve Carell as one of the “idiot” guests to be made fun of at a business-oriented dinner party and Paul Rudd as the ambitious executive who invites him, the Dinner for Schmucks cast includes Bruce Greenwood as Rudd’s boss and dinner host, Jemaine Clement, Stéphanie Szostak, Jeff Dunham, and Lucy Punch.

Plus Zach Galifianakis, Ron Livingston, Andrea Savage, David Walliams, Lucy Davenport, Octavia Spencer, and Chris O’Dowd.

Box office money-loser

Update: Jay Roach’s Dinner for Schmucks ultimately collected a so-so (in relation to its budget) $73 million domestically and a measly $13.8 million (apparently incomplete) internationally. Worldwide total: A money-losing $86.8 million.

Its top international markets were the United Kingdom/Ireland ($4 million), Australia ($3.3 million), and Germany ($1.1 million). Box Office Mojo’s French figures are incomplete.

“Dinner for Schmucks Box Office” endnotes

Also this past weekend, the Zac Efron weepy Charlie St. Cloud turned out to be Universal’s latest dud.

The voice of Dinner for Schmucks’ Steve Carell can also be heard in Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin’s computer-animated comedy Despicable Me, the weekend’s no. 4 movie and Universal’s sole sizable hit so far this year.

Lastly, it’s now clear that Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right is not on its way to becoming the “lesbian Brokeback Mountain.” Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo star.

Unless otherwise noted, “Dinner for Schmucks Box Office: Paul Rudd & Steve Carell Comedy an Unappetizing Money-Loser” box office information via Box Office Mojo. Budget info – which should be taken with a grain of salt – via BOM and/or other sources (e.g., the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Screen Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline.com, etc.).

Comments about Dinner for Schmucks and other titles being hits/profitable or flops/money-losers at the box office (see paragraph below) are based on the available data about their production budget, additional marketing and distribution expenses (as a general rule of thumb, around 50 percent of the production cost), and worldwide gross (as a general rule of thumb when it comes to the Hollywood studios, around 50–55 percent of the domestic gross and 40 percent of the international gross goes to the distributing/producing companies).

Bear in mind that data regarding rebates, domestic/international sales/pre-sales, and other credits and/or contractual details that help to alleviate/split production costs and apportion revenues are oftentimes unavailable, and that reported international grosses may be incomplete (i.e., not every territory is fully – or even partially – accounted for).

Also bear in mind that ancillary revenues (domestic/global television rights, home video sales, streaming, merchandising, etc.) can represent anywhere between 40–70 percent of a movie’s total take. However, these revenues and their apportionment are only infrequently made public.

Paul Rudd Dinner for Schmucks movie image: Merie Weismiller | DreamWorks | Paramount Pictures.

“Dinner for Schmucks Box Office: Paul Rudd & Steve Carell Comedy an Unappetizing Money-Loser” last updated in January 2023.