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The Substance, the Cannes Film Festival winning, Demi Moore body swap horror movie, is poised to bust to great heights at the global box office with a $70M-$75M take.
That’s quite a landmark for the Working Title produced-2 hour and 21-minute running, French shot movie which has the Ghost and $2.5 billion global grossing blockbuster actress in the awards season conversation for her portrayal of an aerobics instructor TV star, Elizabeth, who soon realizes her days are over in Hollywood. However, she gets the opportunity to participate in a body swap experiment which introduces the world, and her former TV audience, to much younger version of herself, under the new alias Sue (Margaret Qualley). Consequences, as unsexy as they are, ensue. The movie received a 13-minute standing ovation at its Cannes premiere back in May and won Best Screenplay for its filmmaker Coralie Fargeat. Moore has been public about the challenges during filming: Battling Shingles and losing 20 pounds.
The Substance repped streamer MUBI‘s first big wide theatrical release splash, opening on Sept. 20 stateside with $3.2M in 6th place at 1,949 theaters. Lionsgate dated on top of the genre movie with their own, the Halle Berry horror film, Never Let Go, which out notched Substance on the chart with a $4.4M start off a TV spot campaign vs. MUBI’s digital and social push. Despite being a few steps behind, the fitness guru horror has shown the greater stamina at the B.O., besting Berry stateside, $16.2M to $10.3M, and also globally, Never Let Go settling at a paltry $16.4M WW.
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There are other notable box office milestones for Substance. Its global results aren’t that far from other Cannes genre launches, i.e. Drive ($79.7M WW) and it’s ahead of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City ($53.8M WW) and Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled ($27.8M WW). Substance has also outstripped such genre movies as Ari Aster’s pre-Covid Midsommar ($48.4M WW) and it’s Moore’s best global haul as a solo star since arguably 1996’s Striptease ($113M).
MUBI acquired The Substance for $12.5M before Cannes in North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America, Germany, Austria, Benelux, Turkey and India. The Match Factory sold all remaining territories. Metropolitan Films picked up Substance from MUBI and The Match Factory also before Cannes for France. Substance was originally made at Universal via Working Title for under $18M. Fargeat, we hear, didn’t want to yield to any requested edits by the studio, hence Uni allowed her to shop the film.
Box office highlights include a massive overperformance in Latin America with $20M, which includes Mexico’s $10M haul, a prime territory for horror. Overall in LatAm, Substance has surpassed the grosses of Talk to Me ($14.7M), Longlegs ($8M) and Immaculate ($6.7M). In the U.S. per Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak, Latino and Hispanic audiences turned out at 22% for Substance after Caucasian moviegoers at 55%.
The Substance in Mexico has outperformed Parasite ($7.5M unadjusted for inflation/currency swings) and M3GAN ($9.5M). It is the second highest grossing C-rated (adults over 18) title this year across the border behind Deadpool & Wolverine ($43.5M) and has out-grossed the takes of Poor Things ($5.8M) and Immaculate ($3.1M).
In Spain with $3.2M, Substance is ahead of Longlegs ($3.1M), Talk to Me ($2.7M) and Immaculate ($1M).
As of last weekend, Substance totaled $1.7M in France or 213K admissions, which bests the territory total of Longlegs ($1.3M).
With $5M in UK and Ireland, Substance has left Never Let Go in the dust which has under $800K, and it’s ahead of Immaculate ($2M). Russia, after a Sept. 19, also delivered $5M to Substance‘s global coffers.
The movie also opened in Belgium in the No. 1 spot via MUBI sister company, Cinéart, on Nov. 6. The Netherlands, also handled by Cinéart, has clocked past $2M after a theatrical release there on Sept. 19.
In Italy, Substance with $1.8M has out-pegged Longlegs ($1.78M), Immaculate ($851K) and MaXXXine ($346K).
MUBI’s force with this acquisition is to be commended, especially with the film industry in need of new distribution players. The Substance dropped on the streamer on Oct. 31 and has already broken every record for MUBI in terms of views, engagement and subscriber acquisition. Top performing countries on MUBI are the US, Mexico and Brazil for the pic. Among the transactional highlights, Substance peaked at #1 in the UK, Ireland, Canada and LATAM, #3 in the US, and #6 in Germany on Apple Itunes. On Fandango it’s #1 in the US. Substance ranked No. 1 on cinema social media platform Letterboxd for more than five weeks and hit 1M watches, becoming the fastest theatrical release to reach one million watched for the Horror genre.
Most global marketing campaigns are spurred from their U.S. plans, and what’s intriguing about Substance‘s global take here is that the print and outdoor campaign didn’t feature any front-facing photos of Moore or co-star Qualley. Rather, it was a campaign which Fargeat had a big say in; the bulk of the one-sheets being avant-garde symbols from the pic: cloned egg yolks, a chicken bone and shiny hot pink exercise leotard. The only facet of Moore seen in a one-sheet of her bare back, stitched-up.
Overall, I’m told the entire global P&A spend for all territories was under $20M per sources, and in the U.S. alone, it was in the single digits.
Whatever Moore lacked in the print campaign, she more than made up for on social media where she pushed the film to her near 15M followers with photos and videos; the movie overall counting a social media reach of 45M according to RelishMix with a strong engagement of 7.6M views on TikTok and 10.8M on Instagram. “The movie’s fandom continues to build, now with 51K fans of Instagram,” reports RelishMix.
Fan-made videos abound galore, this pseudo promo for The Substance concept racking up 3.8M views as mined by RelishMix:
Alas, the global win for Substance settled down to word of mouth. Exhibit A being Substance costumes taking off during Halloween, followed by drag shows. See below:
Among Substance‘s awards momentum to date are a TIFF Midnight Madness Audience Award win as well as multiple European Film Award nominations including European Film and European Screenwriter for Fargeat, and a Gotham Award Lead Performance nom for Moore. The actress previously notched two Golden Globe noms, one for Best Actress Comedy/Musical for 1990’s Ghost, as well as 2007 SAG Awards ensemble nom for Bobby.
Current global for Substance stands at $66.5M. The movie remains in release in its 9th weekend in U.S. Canada where it made $137K at 119 theaters.
Specialty cinema fare has continued to struggle post Covid in the U.S./Canada, particularly with the closures of key cinemas in LA ala the Cinerama Dome and Landmark on Pico Blvd. As such shorter theatrical windows have stunted box office riches from awards season halos. It’s obvious, the greater story of a buzzworthy win lies in global results, evident with The Substance. That’s a box office brag that some streamers, i.e. Netflix with Emilia Perez and Maria, won’t have this season.