A trio of docs and a wider-than-usual run for a Vertical thriller populate a specialty weekend with fewer new openings as theaters stick with Asteroid City and devote screens to Indiana Jones and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. Call it jittery Friday as the indie community like the rest of Hollywood awaits news from SAG-AFTRA as
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Asteroid City delivered a massive jolt to the arthouse and specialty world this weekend as the Wes Anderson film presented by Focus Features blew past records with an estimated $790k three-day gross and $890k estimated for the four-day weekend in just six theaters. That’s a per-theater average of $132,211 for the three days, and $148,901
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
Utopia’s Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) grossed an estimated $10k from one engagement at NYC’s Film Forum, where it was the top-ranking pic. Celebrated filmmaker and photographer Anton Corbijn’s first feature documentary is the story of Hipgnosis, the iconic album art design studio that was a force in the music industry behind some
Two from Magnolia Pictures, the story of an iconic record album design firm back and a sighting of Brian Cox usher in a specialty weekend with smoke clearing over New York City. Acrid plumes from Canadian wildfires have smothered the key arthouse market over the past few days in an unusual air quality event that
Celine Song’s Past Lives from A24 is very much here and now, grossing $232k on four screens for over $58k per location, a nice number for Song’s debut film as the second-biggest limited opening of the year so far. A24 also had the highest in April with Beau Is Afraid at $80k per theater at
A24’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus-starrer You Hurt My Feelings will top an estimated $1.7 million in limited nationwide release for the four-day holiday weekend, at the high end of expectations on 912 screens. That puts it at no. 8 at a domestic box office where Little Mermaid is making all the waves. Breakdown: Friday – $474k; Sat.
“It was a contributor to the specialty box office, and I hope it will be again,” says Laemmle CEO Greg Laemmle of MoviePass, the subscription service that unsurprisingly went bankrupt in early 2020 after offering a movie a day for ten bucks a month. A co-founder Stacy Spikes, who was pushed out amid strategic differences
A beloved ballplayer and an iconic consumer device join a Hollywood satire by Charlie Day, an Emanuele Crialese film with Penelope Cruz and debuts from Sundance and Venice in a potentially strong specialty weekend that will test the appetite for indie film with no new franchise wide releases. Sony Pictures Classics opens Sean Mullin’s Yogi
Focus Features’ Sundance-premiering Polite Society opens on 927 screens, the feature debut of writer/director Nida Manzoor, creator of We Are Lady Parts, the Peacock comedy about the eponymous British punk rock band. This comedic mash-up of sisterly affection, parental disappointment and bold action, where martial artist-in-training Ria Khan tryies to save her older sister from
After posting giant per screen numbers at four theaters last weekend, A24’s Beau Is Afraid jumps to 926 for the distributor’s third outing with Ari Aster. It’s a very different film from his horror favorites Hereditary and Midsommar but one the distributor hopes will cement the director’s place as a modern auteur. According to one
Ari Aster, the horror maestro behind Hereditary and Midsommar, is out with Beau Is Afraid on four screens as A24 presents the SXSW-premiering film In LA (AMC Century City and Burbank) and New York (AMC Lincoln Square, Alamo Brooklyn), in Imax on both coasts, followed next week by a regional Imax expansion and into to
Owen Wilson is back, with brushes, as the longtime host of a beloved but fading Burlington, Vermont-based PBS instructional art show. Paint from IFC Films opens on 800+ screens. Public television is always ripe for parody and happens to be a world Wilson knows. His father Robert Wilson helped launch, and ran, Dallas PBS station
As the new crop of 2023 festival favorites roll out, Focus Features presents A Thousand And One in over 900 carefully curated theaters, testing the appetite for specialty fare at a challenging moment. Short film and video director A.V. Rockwell’s feature-length debut stars Teyana Taylor as free-spirited Inez, who kidnaps her six-year-old son Terry from
Much maligned Richard III finally gets the royal treatment in Stephen Frears’ The Lost King as amateur historian Philippa Langley unearths the monarch’s five century-old remains in a parking lot in Leicester, England in 2012. Two books and a documentary later, IFC Films presents the feature film version in 750+ theaters. “It took eight years
Two icons are back in action this weekend as Roadside Attractions presents the comedy Moving On with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin on close to 800 screens, hoping it will connect with female audiences.Focus Features also opens Willem Dafoe-starring Inside from Vasilis Katsoupis on 350+ screens. It’s been relatively quiet on the specialty front. “There’s
Shout! Studios presents The Magic Flute by Florian Zigl, executive produced by Roland Emmerich, at 325 theaters with expansion likely. A reimagining of the Mozart opera, it follows a present-day teen sent from London to the Austrian Alps on singing scholarship at the legendary Mozart boarding school. There, he discovers a century old forgotten passageway
Aniplex and Crunchyroll of America’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village grossed $10.1 million this weekend in 1,780 theaters. That’s a fourth place finish at the domestic box office but still half the opening of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train which opened to a smash $21
The Quiet Girl, an Oscar contender for Best International Feature, opened to a robust $60k on six screens this weekend for a per-theater average of $10k. The film by Colm Bairead presented by SUPER LTD is based on the short story by Claire Keegan of a shy nine-year-old girl in rural Ireland. It led debuts
Super LTD presents Best International Feature Oscar nominee The Quiet Girl and, as the Academy Awards approach, RRR ramps up again and Navalny returns to theaters for one-week run. Also opening, Aaron Eckhart in Ambush, Charlotte Rampling in Juniper and comedian Jim Gaffigan as the host of a failing children’s science TV show in Linoleum.
Sony Pictures Classics said it’s planning to release Sean Mullin’s documentary on baseball superstar Yogi Berra, It Ain’t Over, in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on May 12, expanding over following weeks. The film is produced by Natalie Metzger, Matt Miller, Peter Sobiloff and Mike Sobiloff with Vanishing Angle and Off Media, and
The title that saw Riz Ahmed stifle laughter, the press room crack up and Allison Williams murmur “no comment” at Oscar nominations last month hits theaters today as ShortsTV presents Oscar Nominated Short Films at circa 380 locations in 75 markets. The program, three feature-length presentations of the five nominees for Live Action, Animated and
EO, the Sideshow/Janus films release told from the point of view of a donkey, is set to pass the $1 million mark in week 14. The Cannes-premiering film by Jerzy Skolimowski, Academy Award nominated for Best International Feature, will gross an estimated $27.6k for the four-day President’s weekend on 37 screens for a cume of just
Searchlight Pictures’ The Banshees Of Inisherin opened to an estimated $181,000 and a raring per screen average of $45,250, beating Tár’s impressive $40,000. Both opened in four locations and now rank no. 2 and no. 3 for an indie per-theater gross this year after A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. That film’s in a class
The Banshees of Inisherin, which won writer-director Martin McDonagh Best Screenplay and Colin Farrell the Volpi Cup for Best Actor in Venice last month, hits theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, expanding to 10 more markets/50 locations next weekend, and to 600-800 screens November 4. If standing ovations say anything, the comedy-drama had a
Specialty film rollouts continues to accelerate with Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave and A24’s Stars At Noon joining releases from previous weeks to populate theaters as awards season gathers steam. Till, from United Artists Releasing, world premiered at the ongoing New York Film Festival to stellar reviews (100% on Rotten Tomatoes,
Focus Features’Tár opened in limited release to strong results with $160,000 at four locations in New York and Los Angles for a $40,000 per theater average, one of the best PTAs since Covid and not bad for a 2-hour and 38-minute arthouse film pre-pandemic. Riding strong reviews, the Cate Blanchett-starrer by Todd Field was no. 1 in three
Today Focus Features opens Tár, the strikingly original return of Todd Field, in four locations in NY and LA. The film premiered at Venice winning star Cate Blanchett Best Actress as musician and conductor Lydia Tár. Early this week, it seemed to mesmerize a sold-out Allice Tully Hall at the New York Film Festival. A 97%
Sarigama Cinemas’ Ponniyin Selvan: Part One crashed the weekend box office at no. 6, looking at $4+ million on 500 screens for a per theater average of $8,260, the biggest of the top ten. The Tamil-language historical epic being billed as India’s Game of Thrones is based on a Tamil history book series that’s read
Imax is out this Sunday with Brandi Carlile: In The Canyon Haze – Live from Laurel Canyon on 31 screens nationwide, an encore of a live event that reps a milestone for the large format exhibitor. The concert was broadcast Thursday from LA’s storied Laurel Canyon neighborhood to 87 Imax theaters (there would have been