Focus Features

The indie box office busted out this year, hitting is stride post-Covid with an eclectic string of releases that made a splash artistically and financially. Independents and mini-majors saw $1.47 billion in box office receipts as of Dec. 27, up from $811.7 million in 2022, according to Comscore. Focus Features had the biggest limited opening
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EXCLUSIVE: Focus Feature we hear has set a July 12, 2024 limited theatrical release for Baltasar Kormákur’s romantic-drama, Touch. Universal Pictures International is handling international distribution sans Iceland. The movie is based on the Icelandic best-selling novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson published by Ecco/Harper Collins in the U.S August 2022. The movie follows one widower’s emotional journey to find
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New Regency‘s Jeff Nichols movie The Bikeriders, which we were told Focus Features took over from Disney, has set a release date of June 21, 2024. The only other title currently scheduled on that weekend is an untitled movie from Universal. The movie starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy and Norman Reedus, follows the
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Focus Features‘ second movie with filmmaker Robert Eggers, Nosferatu, will be hitting cinemas on Wednesday, December 25, 2024. That’s good news for the year-end holiday period, which is still scant of product. The only other wide entries on Dec. 20, 2024 are Disney’s live-action sequel Mufasa and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3. “The audacious filmmaking
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In a super weekend for specialty, Saltburn had a lofty open on seven screens and The Holdovers a nice $2.7 million in a major week-three expansion that put it at no. 6 at the domestic box office. Actors are once again out promoting their films and indie/original fare continues to benefit from fewer studio releases
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Focus Features has set a Jan. 26, 2024 theatrical release date for Goran Stolevski’s latest, Housekeeping For Beginners. It premiered in Venice as part of the official “Orizzonti” (Horizons) competitive section, securing the prestigious Queer Lion Award. See Deadline review. It was selected shortly after as North Macedonia’s international Oscar submission. The film explores the
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Big news in specialty this weekend as Asteroid City arrives in theaters with Wes Anderson and his army of fans behind it and a major marketing campaign by Focus Features. The director’s latest opens at six locations in New York and Los Angeles, where Focus has partnered with Landmark for the reopening of Sunset, the
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Ethan Coen’s Focus Features and Working Title comedy caper, Drive-Away Dolls, will open on Sept. 22. It won’t be a surprise to see this Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan movie among the lineups of the fall film festival trifecta. Written by Coen and Tricia Cooke, Drive-Away Dolls follows Jamie, an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet
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Here’s a movie Focus Features is excited about for next awards season, and it wouldn’t be shocking to see it world premiering at a big film festival some time this year: Alexander Payne’s New England prep school comedy The Holdovers. The Universal label just dated the pic for November 10 with a wider break on
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EXCLUSIVE: On the heels of releasing Goran Stolevski’s feature directorial debut You Won’t Be Alone, Focus Features is re-teaming with the Macedonian-Australian filmmaker on his second feature, Of An Age. Focus has scheduled Of An Age for February 10, 2023, with a national expansion on February 17. Universal has offshore rights sans Australia. Written, directed,
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Sight Unseen, Makeready and Hillman Grad Productions’ A Thousand and One will be released in theaters on March 31, 2023 from Focus Features. The pic reps the feature directorial debut of A.V. Rockwell, off a script the filmmaker wrote, which follows unapologetic and free-spirited Inez (Teyana Taylor), who kidnaps six-year-old Terry from the foster care
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Film premieres and headlines spilling from a trio of festivals either in full swing (Venice), just starting (Telluride) or queued up (Toronto) have indie exhibitors and distributors the most hopeful since Covid hit that a stream of new films could fire up the arthouse market. Todd Field’s Cate Blanchett-starrer TÁR (debuted to a six-minute standing ovation
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Focus Features has set a limited theatrical release for Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on December 2, 2022. The film, directed by Michael Showalter from a screenplay by David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage based on Michael Ausiello’s best-selling memoir, will expand domestically on December 9 and
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Focus Features is shifting Downton Abbey 2 from Dec. 22 to Friday, March 18, 2022. Universal Pictures International will release internationally on the same date. The pic’s original principal cast have returned for the second film, which wraps production in August. New additions are Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye and Dominic West. The screenplay is by
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Focus Features will open Wolf starring George MacKay and Lily-Rose Depp in theaters on Friday, Dec. 3. The first weekend of December, following the five-day Thanksgiving frame, is notoriously one of the slowest at the box office in pre-pandemic times, however, arthouse and awards season fare always break through. Wolf will be on marquees with other limited fare
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(Interactive chart with estimates below) Three different premieres led the specialty box office this weekend with each film breaking a 100K weekend gross. First, Focus Features’ Final Account splashed in at $150K this opening weekend. Over a decade in the making, the timely documentary offers a portrait of the last living generation of everyday people
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Robert Eggers’ next movie The Northman will be hitting theaters on April 8, 2022 via Focus Features. The revenge thriller from The Lighthouse filmmaker stars Alexander Skarsgard,  Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Björk and reteams the filmmaker with his Lighthouse star Willem Dafoe and The Witch star Anya Taylor-Joy. The Northman explores how far a Viking prince will go
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The feature take of Paul Gallico’s novella Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is set for a theatrical release March 4, 2022 via Focus Features in the U.S. and Canada, the distributor said Tuesday. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris stars Lesley Manville, Isabelle Huppert, Jason Isaacs, Lambert Wilson, Alba Baptista, Lucas Bravo and Rose Williams. Directed
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Focus Features said Friday that it will release its dramatic thriller Stillwater, directed by Spotlight Oscar winner Tom McCarthy and starring Matt Damon, in domestic theaters on July 30, 2021. The pic, from Participant and DreamWorks, centers on an American oil-rig roughneck (Damon) from Oklahoma who travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter (Abigail
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Focus Features will be releasing Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast on Nov. 12. The pic is a poignant story of love, laughter and loss in one boy’s childhood, amid the music and social tumult of the late 1960s. Golden Globe nominee Caitriona Balfe stars with Oscar winner Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Ciaran Hinds, and introduces 10 year-old Jude
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Like the title suggests, Promising Young Woman brought a glimmer of promise to the specialty box office space. The Emerald Fennell-directed dramatic thriller starring Carey Mulligan debuted in 1,310 theaters in North America on December 25 earning an estimated $680K. Since making its world premiere at Sundance, the film has been getting tons of buzz and acclaim.
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Focus Features continues its steady rollout of movies into 2021 with the release of Robin Wright’s feature directorial debut drama Land on February 12, 2021, just in time for Oscar qualifications which have a cutoff date of February 28. Land is scheduled on a weekend when the following movies are currently expected to open: 20th Century Studio’s The King’s
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SATURDAY AM UPDATE: Universal/Blumhouse’s genre body swap comedy Freaky starring Vince Vaughn took in $1.45M yesterday, including Thursday night previews ~$200K, on what looks to be a $4M opening at 2,472 theaters. Universal, the only major Hollywood studio putting out consistent fresh wide product during the pandemic, can claim a three-week streak at No. 1 between Focus’
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It’s not common for a studio specialty label to lead the weekend box office two weeks in a row. But that’s the anomaly of pandemic times, and here we have Focus Features taking No. 1 again after last weekend’s Amblin horror film, Come Play, with the Kevin Costner–Diane Lane crime thriller Let Him Go with $1.47M yesterday (including
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SUNDAY AM, Refresh for updates and chart: Focus Features/Amblin’s PG-13 horror movie Come Play came in much better than expected, seeing a boost on Halloween night (as opposed to expected drop) with $1.3M, +18% over Friday+preview’s $1.1M. This puts the pic’s opening weekend at $3.15M in No. 1 spot. One industry insider tells me about the boost,
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