dropped out after production delays. At one point, Don Cheadle also considered leaving the production to perform in Hotel Rwanda. According to Yari, the departure of Ledger from the cast reduced the film's international value and the budget was brought down by one million. Filming Filming began in Los Angeles for a 32-day shoot in December 2003. Haggis made up for the reduced budget by taking out three mortgages on his house, cutting back on exterior shots, and reusing locations. Principal cast members also agreed to pay cuts and deferred their salaries. Production was delayed for a week when Haggis suffered from cardiac arrest while filming a scene, although he defied medical advice to hire a new director. In a 2020 interview with Vulture, Thandiwe Newton stated that Haggis ensured she was wearing special protective underwear for the police sexual assault scene, because he wanted it to look "real" from the camera's perspective for Matt Dillon "to go there". Release Box office After a rough cut was shown at 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, the film premiered at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto in September 2004. It was quickly purchased by Lions Gate Films for $3.5 million. Crash had a wide release on May 6, 2005, and was a box office success in the late spring of 2005. The film grossed $53.4 million domestically, making back more than seven times its estimated $6.5 million-budget. Despite its success in relation to its cost, Crash was the lowest-grossing film at the domestic box office to win Best Picture since The Last Emperor in 1987. Critical response and legacy Initial On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 74% based on 242 reviews, with an average score of 7.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A raw and unsettling morality piece on modern angst and urban disconnect, Crash examines the dangers of bigotry and xenophobia in the lives of interconnected Angelenos." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and described it as "a movie of intense fascination", listing it as the best film of 2005. Ebert concluded his review with the sentiment: "Not many films have the possibility of