‘Where’s My Roy Cohn?’ Has Respectable Debut, ‘Loro’ Opens Quietly – Specialty Box Office

All was fairly quiet on the specialty box office front with a debut of a handful of films. The most notable of the bunch was Matt Tyrnauer’s riveting Where’s My Roy Cohn? Other openers this weekend included a Loro as well as Gunpowder & Sky’s horror-comedy Villains starring IT Chapter Two‘s Bill Skarsgård and Kyra Sedgwick which had openings that were decent, but nothing earth-shattering.

Sony Pictures Classics feature documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn? opened exclusively in New York and Los Angeles on four screens and is estimated to rake in $42,364. Deadline learned that it performed better in New York than it did in Los Angeles — which is probably because the ruthless Donald Trump mentor was more of a New York figure. Nonetheless, SPC hopes to add to their box office stack once Roy Cohn continues to expand next week.

Meanwhile, IFC Films‘ Loro is closing in on a  $5,567 opening on one screen in New York. Paolo Sorrentino’s feature about a corrupt Italian Prime Mister getting scammed by an escort service has tiny hints of Hustlers to it — and as Arianna Bocco, EVP of acquisitions at IFC said, she hopes that word-of-mouth will get more people in the theater to see this film. We’ll just have to see if it gets a bigger audience and more dollar bills once it comes to Los Angeles next week.

The Gunpowder & Sky genre film Villains kicked down the door to bring a subversive home invasion horror to theaters. Directed by Dan Berk & Robert Olsen, the film follows two amateur criminals (Skarsgård and Maika Monroe) who break into a suburban home only to discover a dark secret that two sadistic homeowners (Sedgwick, Jeffrey Donovan) will do anything to keep from getting out. The film had an exclusive opening in Regal Cinemas this weekend on a whopping 100 screens in 33 markets. Its weekend gross is estimated to be $149,969 which is healthy, but Deadline has learned that although it had a mild debut run in New York and Los Angeles, it failed to bring in a strong showing elsewhere.

Other openers this weekend included the Indian film Nikka Zaildar 3 which opened on 61 screens in 32 markets and is expected to net a $105,000 weekend gross. GKIDS brought their animated artistry to the specialty box office this weekend with Hiroyuki Imaishi’s action-packed anime adventure Promare, which brought in an estimated $79,808 in its debut. Rounding out new releases is Oscilloscope‘s gripping war documentary Midnight Traveler from Hassan Fazili which premiered at New York’s Film Forum to the soft tune of $4,200 and will expand to Los Angeles on October 4 with a national rollout to follow.

Speaking of Oscilloscope, Justin Chon’s Ms. Purple continues to hold steady in its third week as it expanded to 12 screens and took in a weekend estimate of $18,400 bringing its cume to $51,811. These numbers are noteworthy in regards to Chon’s indie box office draw as his previous film Gook was at $43,678 in its third week. If the expansion and interest sustain, Ms. Purple may surpass Gook at the box office.

In its second week, Neon and Participant‘s Monos expanded to 15 screens to bring its estimated weekend gross to $52,493, a tiny boost from last week. Abramorama’s Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements second week out on one screen barely moved the needle to $9,680.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice continues to bring the hits as it went out to 218 screens on its third weekend and brought in $436,600 making its cume $1,650,539. This is good news for Greenwich as its previous music documentary Echo in the Canyon which grossed $202,335 on its third weekend out. The film, which is projected to be #18 in the top films of the week, will expand to more top 50 markets such as Boise and Nashville in week four and if it continues to bring in audiences, it may become one of the top five highest-grossing documentaries of the year.

The Peanut Butter Falcon may have fallen from the top 10 to #13 on the list of top films of the week, but it continues to hold strong and impress in its fourth week of wide release (seventh total). The Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s road trip adventure dramedy starring Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson and newcomer Zack Gottsagen has an estimated weekend gross of $1,015,480 bringing its cume to a noteworthy $16,758,976 — and this is from a film that had a $6.2 million budget.

This weekend, Amazon went all-in with Brittany Runs a Marathon as it expanded even further for its widest release to a staggering 1033 theaters in 180 markets in its fifth week, bringing in an estimated weekend gross is $1,044,379. Even though the film is expected to come at #12 on the list of top films of the week, it looks like Brittany has hit a wall as we have learned it dropped another 38% on Friday and is struggling in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, San Diego and a handful of arthouse theaters around the country.

Below are all the estimated weekend grosses at the specialty box office.

Loro (IFC Films) – Week 1 [1 Theater], Weekend $5,567, Average $5,567

Midnight Traveler (Oscilloscope) – Week 1 [1 Screen], Weekend $4,200, Average $4,200, Cume $6,411

Nikka Zaildar 3 (Rising Star Entertainment) Week 1 [61 Screens], Weekend $105,000, Average $1,724

Promare (GKIDS) – Week 1 [31 Screens], Weekend $79,808, Average $2,574

Where’s My Roy Cohn? (Sony Pictures Classics) – Week 1 [4 Screens], Weekend $42,364, Average $10,591

Villains (Gunpowder & Sky) – Week 1 [100 Screens], Weekend $149,969, Average $1,499

After The Wedding (Sony Pictures Classics) Week 7 [31 Screens] Weekend $19,764, Average $638, Cume $1,546,708