A platoon of titles hits the specialty circuit this weekend, getting in ahead of steamroller Avatar: Way of Water and the year-end deadline for Oscar eligibility. This is a soul-searching, what-lies-ahead moment for a market still much too inconsistent for comfort, but that can be pondered later. At the moment, indie distributors are quite busy
Specialty Preview
Sideshow/Janus Films EO held well in week two, grossing $23,217 for the five-day holiday frame ($11,609 per screen) and $16,900 for the three-day weekend ($8,450 per screen). The new cume is $50.7k in a crowded arthouse market, a strong showing for the film starring a melancholic gray donkey. It expands to LA next week opening at
Laura Poitras’ Venice Golden Lion-winner All The Beauty And The Bloodshed opens in three theaters today, testing a crowded specialty market at the IFC Center, Lincoln Center & BAM in NYC. It adds LA and San Francisco (AMC Sunset 5 & AMC Kabuki) Dec. 2. Presented by Neon, this is the story of internationally renowned photographer
Universal Pictures is giving Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans a platform release starting with four locations in NYC (Lincoln Square, Union Square) and LA (The Grove, Century City) with a robust media campaign aimed at cinephiles, but also capitalizing on the broad appeal of a Spielberg production, testament to unusual pedigree of the semiautobiographical film. It premiered in
Indie distributor Utopia, currently in theaters with Holy Spider, anticipates music documentary Meet Me In The Bathroom will be its biggest weekend opening to date. It’s holding onto numbers for Sunday from one-night premieres this past week in LA at the Fonda and in NY at Webster Hall with live performances by The Moldy Peaches,
Three films opening this weekend highlight women’s rights, class and racism — nothing ripped from today’s headlines exactly, but features with a distinctive moment and point of view that appear particularly relevant today. Call Jane, Holy Spider and Armageddon Time join Tár, Till, The Banshees of Inisherin and others already in theaters as it gets
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,
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%
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
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
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
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
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
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
A handful of smaller films will start to test audience enthusiasm for movie theaters without big tentpoles. It’s been a rocky summer for specialty releases, and an uphill climb as arthouses emerge from Covid jitters with franchise films sucking up oxygen and screens. But superheroes are on hiatus. “There isn’t giant competition from tentpoles,” said
Laure Calamy, who plays Noémie, the wacky assistant to Mathias Barneville in Call My Agent!, won the César (French equivalent of the Oscars) for Best Actress for My Donkey, My Lover & I, the film by Caroline Vignal that opens this weekend Stateside from Greenwich Entertainment. It’s the distributor’s second narrative film in a year
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 —
Fathom Events presents Betty White: A Celebration in 1,529 locations nationwide, a one-day-only special event on Monday honoring the actress who died Dec. 31 just a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday. The star-studded reflection on White’s life and career, which had already been set by filmmakers Steven Boettcher and Mike Trinklein to celebrate
Sony Pictures Entertainment follows its release of Parallel Mothers last week with Jockey in three theaters in NY/LA (Film Forum, AMC Lincoln Square, Laemmle Royal) in a specialty market crowded by holdovers and wide releases, and amid a Covid-19 surge that’s particularly tough on arthouses. The frame isn’t ideal for new specialty fare in any case but
Adult demos slow to embrace cinemas may be even slower this holiday weekend amid a barrage of breathless Omicron headlines — that aren’t all bad. It spreads fast but seems less virulent than previous strains, and may burn out faster. “I think we might get dinged a little bit,” said one distribution executive. However, “This
Much-lauded The Lost Daughter, Tribeca Fest winner The Novice, George Clooney’s The Tender Bar plus Swan Song with Mahershala Ali and the doc President dip a toe in the specialty market this Spidey-centric weekend amid gathering Covid clouds. The question: how will a surging infection rate (that just closed down theaters in Denmark and is
Sony Pictures Classics releases Telluride-darling documentary Julia with a national TV push, culinary events and virtual screenings through November hosted by famous chefs from Alice Waters (San Francisco) and Johnny Spero (Boston) to Jamie Bissonnette (Houston) and luminaries from New York, LA, Philly and Miami. Directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen talked up the film
Neon presents Spencer on just under 1,000 screens, Pablo Larraín’s well reviewed psychological drama about the weekend Princess Diana rewrote the future of the British monarchy. The film is said to be looking at a $2-$2.5 million opening with an 84% Certified Fresh critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes but a 50% audience score (albeit from
Focus Features presents Edgar Wright’s Last Night In Soho, a twisty psycho-thriller with a great soundtrack, as Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch goes wider, testing the appeal of a director whose films have been called the arthouse equivalent of Marvel. Last Night, a time-bending genre tale, unspools on just over 3,000 screens, not exactly specialty
After a long Covid delay, The French Dispatch opens this weekend with distributor Searchlight Pictures and the industry hoping the whimsical Wes Anderson’s film brings a touch of Grand Budapest Hotel-ish coin to the specialty box office. Hoping, but not counting on it, as the box office take beyond studio tentpoles has been largely dour
IFC presents Mia Hansen-Løve’s Cannes entry Bergman Island, Film Movement brings Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy to the arthouse this weekend, as A24’s surprise hit Lamb and Greenwich Entertainment’s The Rescue go wider week two after a strong open. It’s early days but a nascent specialty revival may be in the works ahead of a stream of
The Rescue, an arresting truth-is-stranger-than fiction story of a Thai youth soccer team trapped in a remote flooded cave system opens on five screens in NY/LA/Chicago this weekend in a specialty market waiting “for audiences to wake up and see that they’re missing out,” according to Ed Arentz, co-president of the doc’s distributor Greenwich Entertainment.
Neon presents Julia Ducournau’s Titane, the lauded Palme d’Or winner set to test a stressed specialty market even as Messrs. Venom and Bond crash into wide release this weekend and next. The edgy, high octane French tale about a woman with a metal plate in her head and an automotive fetish hits 562 screens in