Focus Features will open its Sundance Film Festival acquisition Didi on July 26. The movie from Oscar nominee Sean Wang premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical and audience acclaim, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast. Inspired by Wang’s
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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
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
Focus Features has set a theatrical release of May 10, 2024 for the Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black. Sam Taylor-Johnson directs from a script written by Matt Greenhalgh. The duo previously teamed on 2009’s Nowhere Boy. Back to Black is a never-before-seen glimpse into Amy Winehouse’s early rise to fame and the release of
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
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
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
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
Theatrical releases continue to be added to the 2024 calendar, which is a very good sign given that we still haven’t seen the shake-up yet from the prolonged SAG-AFTRA strike. Focus Features just dated the horror comedy, Lisa Frankenstein, which was written by Oscar winner Diablo Cody for a Feb. 9, 2024 opening. Also hitting
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
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
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
Focus Features has set a September 8 global release date for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. That will give some breadth to the post-Labor Day box office and an option for older female moviegoers, that weekend already having New Line’s The Nun 2 on the schedule. Part 3 was written and directed by the
Focus Features has dated Wes Anderson’s next movie Asteroid City for June 16, 2023. Do we smell a Cannes selection? Pic will go even wider on June 23. Universal, as previously reported, has overseas. Focus previously teamed with Anderson and Indian Paintbrush on 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom. Asteroid City, written by Anderson based on a story
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,
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
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
A24’s Bodies Bodies Bodies hit theaters with the per-screen average this weekend in a limited opening, and the second best of the year. That record was set last spring with Everything Everywhere All at Once as the indie distributor piles up successes. Halina Reijn’s Gen-Z whodunnit comedy grossed $226,526 on six screens in NY and
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris grossed $1.35 million in its second week with a mix of arthouse and commercial theaters among top 10 locations and a nice hold from its opening weekend (-31%). Cume to date is $4.65 million for the film starring Leslie Manville as a British housekeeper who dreams of owning a Christian
Focus Features’ Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris will hit an estimated $1.9 million weekend gross at 980 theaters drawing women with those 55 years of age and older repping 44% of the total. Turnout was best on the coasts for the drama starring Leslie Manville and Isabelle Huppert. That’s a PSA of $1,939 and a
Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris, a kind Cinderella story for older women with a Dior twist, arrives in 978 theaters this weekend with strong reviews and great word of mouth. The film is a known property among that demo given its prime trailer treatment before Focus Features’ fan favorite Downtown Abbey: A New Era —
Saturday AM Update: The first Halloween in two years during the pandemic is taking its toll on the domestic box office, a grey cloud which many saw coming, with many trick-or-treating or heading to parties tonight. Essentially, whenever the holiday falls on a Sunday, it’s poised to gut the weekend. And, yes, we can blame
Focus Features has set a moderate release for The Outfit on Feb. 25, 2022. The pic reps Oscar winner Graham Moore’s directorial debut, and follows Leonard, played by Oscar winner Mark Rylance, an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row. But after a personal tragedy, he’s ended up in Chicago, operating a
Focus Features landed another specialty success with The Card Counter, Paul Schrader’s biggest directorial opening in over 30 years since 1987’s Light of Day and with a likely No. 8 ranking at the North American box office this weekend. The film – starring Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe — ran in 580
Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter moves from Venice into 579 theaters this weekend — the first in a welcome stream of specialty films from the Lido, Telluride and Toronto that could, perhaps maybe, buck up the struggling arthouse market this fall. The film is 90% certified fresh and hails from Focus Features, which presented one
Universal did drop something fresh during its presentation at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Wednesday: the first look at Michael Bay’s action movie Ambulance. In the pic, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Eiza Gonzalez, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Garret Dillahunt, two robbers steal an ambulance after their heist goes awry. Mateen plays a working-class guy with a
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
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
(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
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