What's Your Number? Budget

What Is the Budget of What's Your Number? (2011)?

What's Your Number? (2011), directed by Mark Mylod and distributed by 20th Century Fox, was produced on a reported budget of $20,000,000. The R-rated romantic comedy starred Anna Faris as a Boston woman whose latest read of a women's magazine article convinces her she has slept with too many men and must revisit her exes to find the right one, with Chris Evans as her hard-partying across-the-hall neighbor who agrees to help locate them. Contrafilm produced for Fox, with Beau Flynn, Tripp Vinson, and Dan Jinks producing and Karyn Bosnak's novel 20 Times a Lady serving as the source material.

The investment reflected a contained mid-budget studio romantic comedy positioned for adult audiences seeking R-rated counter-programming to the broad PG-13 romcom genre. The Boston shoot was anchored by the Massachusetts film tax credit, which provided a meaningful offset against location-heavy production costs. Fox needed worldwide grosses of approximately $50,000,000 to clear marketing and distribution costs, a benchmark the film fell well short of by the end of its theatrical window.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

What's Your Number?'s reported $20,000,000 budget was distributed across several core production areas:

• Above-the-Line Talent: Anna Faris commanded the largest single fee in the production, with her post-House Bunny (2008) and Scary Movie franchise profile supporting a leading-lady payday. Chris Evans, who shot the film immediately before Captain America: The First Avenger transformed his commercial profile, received a co-lead salary that was modest by his later Marvel standards. Director Mark Mylod, primarily a British television director coming off Ali G Indahouse (2002) and The Royle Family, received a feature-director rate appropriate to a Fox studio comedy.
• Boston Location Shoot: Principal photography took place in Boston and surrounding Massachusetts towns during the summer of 2010, using practical locations including the Boston Common, North End restaurants, Brookline residential streets, and Massachusetts General Hospital exteriors. The Massachusetts state film tax credit program provided a substantial offset against location, lodging, and below-the-line costs.
• Ensemble Ex-Boyfriend Casting: The film required casting roughly a dozen ex-boyfriend roles spanning the lead character's revisited dating history, with Anthony Mackie, Andy Samberg, Joel McHale, Zachary Quinto, Martin Freeman, Chris Pratt, and Thomas Lennon each filling a single-scene character arc. Each guest appearance commanded a recognizable-name day-rate, and the production schedule had to accommodate the various performers' availability.
• Wardrobe and Hair: Costume designer Carol Cutshall built distinct wardrobe arcs for each of the ex-boyfriend vignettes and a parallel arc for Anna Faris's evolving lead-character looks. The Massachusetts-rich production featured multiple wedding-event wardrobe sequences, including a sister's wedding rehearsal and main ceremony, which required formalwear continuity across the principal-photography schedule.
• Music and Soundtrack: Composer Aaron Zigman delivered the orchestral score, while music supervisor Jonathan Karp assembled an extensive soundtrack of contemporary pop and indie-rock placements. The film required clearing multiple master and synchronization rights for needle drops used in romantic-montage and dance sequences, with the soundtrack mix leaning into Boston-rock and singer-songwriter catalog tracks.
• Visual Effects and Inserts: The film required minor digital cleanup and continuity effects, but no significant VFX line item. Most of the production spend went to location, talent, and below-the-line crew, with post-production handled at standard Los Angeles facilities once the Boston shoot wrapped.

How Does What's Your Number?'s Budget Compare to Similar Films?

At a reported $20,000,000, What's Your Number? sat in the lower-middle tier for adult romantic comedies of the early 2010s. The comparison set below illustrates how its production scale stacked up against contemporaneous R-rated comedies:

• Bridesmaids (2011): Budget $32,500,000 | Worldwide $306,478,883. Universal's Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph R-rated wedding comedy, released four months before What's Your Number?, cost roughly sixty percent more and grossed more than ten times worldwide, providing the gold-standard benchmark for adult-female-led R-rated comedy that the Fox release consciously chased and missed.
• No Strings Attached (2011): Budget $25,000,000 | Worldwide $149,202,036. Paramount's Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher R-rated romcom cost twenty-five percent more than What's Your Number? and grossed almost five times worldwide, illustrating that the R-rated romantic comedy market had clear upside in 2011 when the casting and marketing hooks landed.
• Friends with Benefits (2011): Budget $35,000,000 | Worldwide $149,541,067. Screen Gems's Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake R-rated romantic comedy cost seventy-five percent more than What's Your Number? and also grossed almost five times worldwide, providing a second 2011 R-rated romcom comp that succeeded where Fox's release failed.
• The House Bunny (2008): Budget $25,000,000 | Worldwide $70,156,365. Anna Faris's previous lead-vehicle Sony romantic comedy cost twenty-five percent more than What's Your Number? and grossed more than twice as much worldwide, demonstrating that Faris had a clear commercial ceiling that the Fox release fell well below.
• Going the Distance (2010): Budget $32,000,000 | Worldwide $42,138,927. Warner Bros.'s Drew Barrymore and Justin Long R-rated romantic comedy cost sixty percent more than What's Your Number? and grossed marginally more worldwide, providing a closer underperformance peer.

What's Your Number? Box Office Performance

What's Your Number? opened on September 30, 2011 to $5,401,184 in the United States, finishing fifth on its opening weekend behind Dolphin Tale, Moneyball, Courageous, and 50/50. The film fell sharply in its second weekend and never built positive word of mouth. It ended its domestic run at $14,011,084 and added $16,084,224 internationally for a worldwide total of $30,095,308. Here is the financial breakdown:

• Production Budget: $20,000,000
• Estimated Prints & Advertising (P&A): approximately $25,000,000 to $30,000,000
• Total Estimated Investment: approximately $45,000,000 to $50,000,000
• Worldwide Gross: $30,095,308
• Net Return: approximately $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 theatrical loss (against total estimated investment)
• ROI: approximately negative 30% to 40% (against total estimated investment)

What's Your Number? returned approximately $0.60 to $0.67 in theatrical revenue for every $1 invested when measured against total estimated production and marketing spend, placing it among the clearer commercial underperformers in Fox's 2011 release calendar. The domestic share of the gross was $14,011,084 against an international share of $16,084,224, a 47/53 split that demonstrated unusual international resilience for a Boston-set R-rated romcom.

The collapse coincided with Chris Evans's transformation into a Marvel A-list star with Captain America: The First Avenger released two months earlier, an unfortunate timing accident that meant the studio's casting bet became commercially valuable just as the film failed to capitalize on it. Home video and cable windows partially recovered the investment, with the film building a substantial second-life audience on streaming services in subsequent years.

What's Your Number? Production History

Development began in 2008 when Fox optioned Karyn Bosnak's 2006 novel 20 Times a Lady, with Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson producing through Contrafilm. The original script by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden, who had written for Just Shoot Me and Seinfeld, adapted the source novel for the screen. British television director Mark Mylod attached in 2009 on the strength of his Royle Family and Entourage work, marking his return to feature direction after Ali G Indahouse (2002). Producer Dan Jinks joined the project as a third producer in 2010. The Massachusetts state film tax credit anchored the production location in Massachusetts.

Anna Faris attached to the lead role in early 2010 with a development deal that gave her input into the script, and Chris Evans signed on in spring 2010 immediately before he began principal photography on Captain America: The First Avenger. The ex-boyfriend ensemble was cast in the months leading up to production, with Anthony Mackie, Andy Samberg, Joel McHale, Zachary Quinto, Martin Freeman, Chris Pratt, and Thomas Lennon each signing on for single-scene comic vignettes.

Principal photography ran from June to August 2010 in Boston and surrounding Massachusetts towns. Practical locations included the Boston Common, North End Italian restaurants, Brookline residential streets, the Boston Public Garden, and Cambridge bookstore exteriors. The Massachusetts Film Office coordinated the location-heavy production, with the state's film tax credit providing a substantial offset against the location, lodging, and below-the-line costs.

Post-production extended through late 2010 and into mid-2011, with Fox eventually scheduling the film for a September 30, 2011 release in an adult-female counter-programming slot. Marketing emphasized the high-concept hook and the ex-boyfriend ensemble cameos, but trade-press coverage at the time noted that the campaign struggled to differentiate the film from the more visible 2011 R-rated comedies Bridesmaids, No Strings Attached, and Friends with Benefits, all of which had already exhausted audience demand for the format.

Awards and Recognition

What's Your Number? received no significant awards recognition. The film was not nominated at the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, or the major guild ceremonies, and it did not register at the People's Choice Awards or Critics' Choice Awards.

At the genre and audience awards the film also failed to land. Anna Faris received no recognition at the Teen Choice Awards or MTV Movie Awards, both of which were demographic targets for the film. The awards conversation broadly treated What's Your Number? as a non-factor, reflecting both its mid-tier release and its underperforming commercial profile.

Critical Reception

What's Your Number? received broadly negative reviews. The film holds a 23% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 162 critic reviews, with a critical consensus describing it as a misjudged and tonally muddled R-rated romcom that wastes its leads. On Metacritic, the film scored 35 out of 100, indicating generally negative reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a B-, a forgiving grade given the critical reaction.

Critics broadly praised the chemistry between Anna Faris and Chris Evans but objected to the screenplay's premise, the slut-shaming undertones of the magazine-article device, and the unevenness of the ex-boyfriend comic vignettes. Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, writing that "there is the germ of a clever idea here, but the screenplay drags it through every available rom-com cliché," and The New York Times's Stephen Holden called it "a wearying exercise that mistakes raunch for daring." Variety's Justin Chang noted Chris Evans's appeal but called the film "a misfire that confirms the unfortunate Bridesmaids effect."

A handful of mainstream outlets were marginally more forgiving, with Entertainment Weekly noting the supporting-cast cameos as the principal saving grace, but the consensus across both trade press and mainstream outlets was unambiguously negative. The film's reputation has been reassessed somewhat more positively in subsequent years, particularly as Chris Evans's post-Captain America profile drew streaming viewers to revisit his pre-Marvel romcom work, but its theatrical reception stands as a clear commercial and critical disappointment.