Products You May Like
It’s an energized indie weekend with a high potential crop of new specialty releases from wide to limited, original, and based off a hit video game, a cult horror and Shakespeare. BTS is back in concert with a global livestream, and a documentary on Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman has strong presales on one screen in NYC. The overall box office is at its liveliest in years with theater owners and distributors — including an indie contingent — set to gather at CinemaCon in Las Vegas next week.
Independent Film Company’s reimagining of 1978 cult horror Faces Of Death starring Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery debuts on 1,600 screens. Directed by Daniel Goldhaber, it’s not a reboot but explores the original’s infamous “Is it real or not?” concept as a young woman (Ferreira), working as a content moderator for a TikTok-like video platform, discovers what appears to be re-enactments of murders from the original film. In an online world where nothing can be trusted, she must determine whether the violence is fiction or unfolding in real time. Written by Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei.
IFC is positioning the pic as counter-programming to studio fare with a graphic marketing campaignthat leans into the property’s provocative legacy. Its original teaser was taken down from YouTube and posters deemed too graphic for theaters. The red band trailer received 27 million views, the most ever for an IFC film. The distributor is reporting $450k in Thursday sales, its second highest Thursday ever after 2025 box office hit Clown In A Cornfield.
Neon opens Genki Kawarmura’s Japanese thriller Exit 8 on 490 screens. Based on the eponymous hit video game created by Kotake Create, it stars Yamato Kôchi as a man trapped in an endless sterile subway passage who sets out to find Exit 8. The rules are simple: do not overlook anything out of the ordinary. If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don’t, carry on. But even a single oversight will send him back to the beginning.
World premiered in the midnight section at Cannes, moving to TIFF, Sitges, Busan, Rotterdam with strong reviews. At 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.The project was a hit in its native Japan, grossing over $35 million. Neon’s marketing tour with Kawamura and cast– including Q&As hosted by The Duffer Brothers and Guillermo Del Toro – hit top markets including NY, L.A., Austin and San Francisco.
Also from Neon, Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers in limited release in NYC (AMC Lincoln Square, IFC Center) and L.A. (AMC Grove, AMC Century City). Starring Ian McKellen as a mainstay of the London art scene who has drifted into a cluttered seclusion, it opens with an activation featuring a series of free talks called Canvas On The Silver Screen with art world figures joining Soderbergh, McKellen, star Michaela Coel and writer Ed Solomon. The series started in New York Thursday at the Breuer building and moves to the WSA space downtown today. Neonset advanced screenings in Austin, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC with local artists and experts ahead of the film’s April 17 expansion.
The Christophers premiered at TIFF (see Deadline review) and sits at 97% Certified Fresh with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It follows Julian Sklar (McKellen), once a mainstay of the London art scene, whose two estranged children played by James Corden and Jessica Gunning enlist a young painter and sometime-forger (Coel) to pose as a prospective assistant. She is to gain access to a series of unfinished canvases Julian has buried deep in his home studio in a deceptive bid to secure an inheritance.
Vertical presents a modern Hamlet by Aneil Karia on 325 screens, starring and produced by Riz Ahmed. Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy is reimagined within London’s elite South Asian community. When Hamlet (Ahmed) returns for his father’s funeral, he is stunned to discover his uncle Claudius is marrying his newly widowed mother. Visited by his father’s ghost, Hamlet learns his brutal murder was at the hands of Claudius and spirals into a quest for vengeance that exposes the rot at the heart of the family’s empire and threatens his own sanity. Written by Michael Lesslie. Premiered at Telluride.
GKids is releasing the Studio 4ºC anime comedyChaOon about 270 screens. Directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, written by Saku Konohana and starring Anna Yamada, Ouji Suzuka. In a fantastical future, humans and mermaids share a troubled coexistence. Stephan, an anxious employee at a shipbuilding company, has big ideas to save the sea. But his life explodes into ecstaticchaos when bubbly mermaid princessChaoproposes marriage out of the blue. Between shopping sprees, giant robots, and actual fireworks, the unlikely pair flounder through their new romance and unlock their true feelings.
DocumentarySteal This Story, Please!, the life and career of award-winning progressive investigative journalistAmy Goodman, opens at the IFC Center in New York. Expands to L.A. next week followed by a national rollout to 50+ major markets with appearances by the Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (Trouble The Water, The Janes) and Goodman, longtime host of the independent news program Democracy Now! The film, with over $26k in presales, has been popular on the festival circuit after premiering at Telluride and DOC NYC. It took audience awards at Palm Springs, Seattle DocFest, Woodstock, Mill Valley, St Louis and Hamptons Docfest; the Social Justice award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival; and a Special Jury Award and Audience Choice Award at the Santa Fe International Film Festival. Deal and Lessin are self-distributing with mTuckman Media.
Trafalgar Releasing, Hybe and Bight Music present the first of two live concerts from pop royalty BTS as the group returns to the global stage with BTS World Tour ‘Arirang’ in Goyang: Live Viewing at 1,200 theaters in North America (3,800 globally) Saturday. The K-pop group’s first tour in four years will span 34 cities and 82 shows starting in Goyang, South Korea with two full-length concerts presented live in cinemas worldwide. The second, BTSWORLD TOUR ‘ARIRANG’ IN TOKYO: LIVE VIEWING will hit April 18. The tour accompanies their fifth full-length album.
Editor’s note: This story previously included Magnolia Pictures’ Normal, which doesn’t open until next week