Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream swept up a cool $922,000 at the domestic box office this weekend, while an impressive array of top industry players took Saturday to mull the global future of arthouse film. The real test — of specialty’s core adult audience willingness to return to cinemas — starts this fall, according to execs
Independent
The sequel to a beloved British family film, a heavy metal re-release, an Apple title from TIFF and Abigail Disney’s takedown of the American Dream populate the specialty film weekend in a market that may have found sturdier footing ahead of awards season and amid a dearth of blockbuster fare. “I think there’s a lot
Roadside Attractions has taken domestic rights for To The End, the follow-up film from Rachel Lears (Knock Down The House), and set a Dec. 9 theatrical-only release date. The deal was announced by Co-Presidents Howard Cohen and Eric d’Arbeloff. The film, which premiered at Sundance, covers three years of both hope and crisis leading to
Brett Morgen’s kaleidoscopic ode to David Bowie landed at no 10 in North America this weekend, singing up $1.225 million on 170 screens – exclusively Imax (159 U.S. locations, 11 in Canada). The $7,207 PSA for the Neon distributed Moonage Daydream – expanding to about 600 screens next week — was the best of the
A steady flow of specialty films starts this weekend with the return of a key player to cinemas and a broader arthouse slate that will expand steadily into awards season. This is still a weird theatrical landscape but independent distributors and theater owners have agreed for months that there’s no recovery without a brisker pace
After Ever Happy, the fourth installment of the popular After romance/drama franchise, will gross circa $1.1 million since its release last Wednesday on 1,085 screens. From Fathom Events, this was the top film in the domestic marketplace Sept. 7-8 for a two-day run before dipping to 200+ screens this weekend. Vertical Entertainment will pick up
The Story of Film: A New Generation opens at two dozen theaters this weekend — Laemmle Royal in LA, Museum of the Moving Image in NY, Music Box Theatre in Chicago and Brattle in Cambridge. It’s a mix of arthouses, cinematheques, museums and even a few multiplexes for Mark Cousins’ follow-up to his 15-hour, 2011
Labor Day weekend saw blockbusters old and new buoyed by cheap tickets, as was a limited openings like Saloum with multiple sold out screenings at two theaters, including every showtime on Saturday. Over 3,000 theaters, including IFC Center and Alamo Drafthouse LA, where the French-Senegalese indie film began a qualifying run, offered $3 tickets for
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
A glum weekend box office overall (one of the worst of the year) wasn’t so awful for specialty, relatively speaking, with Breaking passing $1M on 900 screens and Spanish-language The Good Boss at $27K on 15. Both are a far cry from pre-pandemic numbers but did hit the new normal for limited releases – reaching
Cohen Media Group hopes a Spanish film can dent the tough market for foreign language fare, Bleecker Street is out with a hostage drama and A24 presents Owen Kline’s directorial debut about a teenage cartoonist as the arthouse market flexes more muscle than it has in weeks. The dearth of new releases itself nudged some
“People are catching up on films,” is how one arthouse executive described the current moment in specialty, which echoes the slowdown in studio wide releases. August can be slow ahead of a trio of festivals – Venice, Toronto, New York – and a ramp up to awards season. It can also offer an less obstructed
The Picturehouse release of National Geographic Documentary Films The Territory grossed a solid $26.4K in six markets (eight screens) for a PSA of $3,308 with its climate change message attracting a broader than typical age range for a theatrical doc, especially lately, according to Picturehouse CEO Bob Berney. He called it “very encouraging to see
A24’s Marcel The Shell With Shoes On hit the top ten in North America at no. 8 with an estimated $340k in week three at just 48 locations and a cume north of $963k – the latest hit for the distributor after powerhouse Everything Everywhere All At Once blasted off at the specialty box office.
The nation’s fourth-largest cinema chain is testing a new subscription program called MovieFlex+ that includes a curated set of small and mid-sized films each week for no extra charge. “We can’t live off just blockbusters,” chairman and CEO Greg Marcus tells Deadline. “We cannot just live off dinner. We need breakfast and lunch too.” The
Moviegoing is definitely back with viewers flocking to franchise films that 1) continue to roll out in the first sustained barrage of big new titles since Covid, and 2) continue to do huge business as they stick around in theaters. They’re sucking up screens and exacerbating a release-pattern quandary for independent distributors seeking signs that
The Forgiven with Jessica Chastain opens in 122 theaters this weekend as the flow of indie films continues to build with well-reviewed, festival-pedigreed product including Mr. Malcom’s List and Clara Sola. Meanwhile, producers and most other U.S. businesses are hoping economic storm clouds won’t ding their industry’s nascent revival. “I think we have seen a
The big screen debut of Marcel The Shell With Shoes On opened at $170K on six screens in New York and LA, the highest PSA of the weekend at $28,267 for the iconic lonely snail voiced by Jenny Slate. The mock documentary about the loveable anthropomorphic mollusk hails from distributor A24, a distributor that manages
A24 is going animated whimsical with Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Neon opens Beba, Cohen Media Group presents Apples, IFC Midnight Flux Gourmet and Abramorama a documentary The Human Trial in limited release at arthouse cinemas. These venues have been doing a bit better, slowly luring Covid-spooked key older demos back into the theater-going
Mubi Go, which has helped buoy NYC’s arthouse market by offering members a free movie ticket a week at participating theaters, expands to LA today where the biz could really use a boost. The films are curated and the first is Apple’s Cha Cha Real Smooth. Mubi, a global streaming service, production company and film
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
Sony Picture Classics and Neon fared well in their small releases this week with Nine Days and Ailey respectively, running across 6 total locations in New York, Los Angeles and Irvine – both notching heavy per screen averages with the former leading to its wider release next week. Nine Days hit NYC (Angelika, AMC Lincoln Square)
Science fiction drama Nine Days from Sony Pictures Classics opens in four theaters in a specialty market buoyed by recent releases like Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain and Pig. New York’s arthouse scene, outpaced by LA of late, is perking up, distributors say (Ailey numbers were super there) and moviegoers are rewarding unique films
The Paris Theater, an NYC cinematic landmark rescued by Netflix in 2019, will officially reopen August 6 with the streamer’s The Forty-Year-Old Version by Radha Blank and a week of repertory films programmed by the director. The only single-screen movie theater in Manhattan and the borough’s largest, with 545 seats, has hosted limited theatrical engagements
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain kept its spot in the North American top ten for week two in 954 theaters – up by 27 — with an $830,000 estimated gross for the three days, leading the specialty box office. As per Focus Features, that was a total cume of over $3.7 million for the
Mark Wahlberg strides into theaters this weekend with Joe Bell as the Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men, upcoming King Richard) film debuts on 1,093 screens supported by robust advertising and a star-driven social media campaign. Roadside Attractions is distributing, having snapped up the film from Solstice Studios which acquired it off of a 2020
Arthouse bounced higher this weekend as Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain hit $1.9 million — the strongest specialty opening this year and the best yet for Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) His documentary is No. 8 at the U.S. box office. Pig starring Nicolas Cage hit No.
Questlove’s Summer of Soul is up to 753 theaters as the doc about the 1969 ‘Black Woodstock’ concert in Harlem that debuted in two locations last weekend crossed into arthouse, commercial and urban venues. Not that it was easy, said Frank Rodriguez, SVP General Sales Manager, Searchlight Pictures. “Exhibitors are eager to get back on
EXCLUSIVE: NEON and Bleecker Street have formed the joint home entertainment distribution company DECAL. The standalone full-service operation, which is a joint venture between the two film labels, will handle distribution deals on the home entertainment rights to both NEON and Bleecker Street’s curated slate of features and will be overseen by NEON’s Andrew Brown