Profile Budget

What is known about the production of Profile?

"Profile," a thriller released in 2018, was directed by Timur Bekmambetov and stars Valene Kane, Shazad Latif. The production budget has not been publicly disclosed, though Bazelevs, Tabbak produced the film, making it a notable entry in the thriller landscape whose financial details remain private.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

While specific budget breakdowns are not publicly available, typical cost drivers for a thriller production like this include:

• Production: The film is based on French journalist Anna Erelle's book In the Skin of a Jihadist about her investigation into the recruitment of young women by ISIS.

Profile Box Office Performance

"Profile" earned $1,744,740 domestically and $1,763,278 worldwide at the box office.

Awards and Recognition

4 wins & 7 nominations total

Critical Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 62% based on 94 reviews, and an average rating of 6/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Profiles unique narrative gimmick is enough to carry the film partway, but it's ultimately overwhelmed by an increasingly ludicrous plot." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 54 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

How Does Profile's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

• Searching (2018): Budget $880,000 | Worldwide $75,462,037. A higher-profile screenlife thriller from the same producer Timur Bekmambetov, with vastly stronger box office.
• Unfriended (2014): Budget $1,000,000 | Worldwide $64,364,198. The screenlife horror that launched the format, at a comparable production scale with dramatically higher returns.
• Host (2020): Budget $500,000 | Worldwide $1,000,000. A pandemic-era screenlife horror at half the scale with comparable theatrical performance.
• Open Windows (2014): Budget $3,000,000 | Worldwide $300,000. An earlier screenlife thriller starring Elijah Wood with broader scale and weaker box office.

Profile Production History

Profile is based on the 2015 nonfiction book In the Skin of a Jihadist by French journalist Anna Erelle, who infiltrated an ISIS recruitment network using a fake social media profile. Bekmambetov, the Kazakh-Russian filmmaker behind Wanted (2008) and Night Watch (2004), had been developing the screenlife format through his Bazelevs production banner since the early 2010s.

The film was shot in Moscow and London across approximately twelve days in 2017, with the production captured almost entirely through laptop screen captures, video calls, and browser windows. Valene Kane and Shazad Latif performed scenes opposite each other on real video calls, with the production routing all signals through a controlled internal system.

Profile premiered at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award in the Panorama section. Distribution was delayed several years by independent acquisition negotiations and the COVID-19 pandemic. Focus Features eventually opened the film theatrically in the United States on May 14, 2021, nearly three years after its festival debut.