‘Asteroid City’ and Wes Anderson Are Looking to Boost the Specialty Box Office
With no new franchise tentpoles coming this weekend, Warner Bros.’ struggling “The Flash” may still stay No. 1 despite taking a stiff second weekend drop. But farther down the chart, Focus Features’ “Asteroid City” is looking to give specialty theaters a boost.
This past weekend, “Asteroid City” was released in six theaters in Los Angeles and New York and lifted by writer-director Wes Anderson’s devoted fans to a four-day limited opening of $1 million and a three-day per theater average of $142,230, the highest per-theater average ever for a six-theater release and the highest for any limited release since “La La Land” in December 2016.
By comparison, Anderson’s 2018 film “Isle of Dogs” was released by Searchlight Pictures in 27 theaters and made $1.6 million for a $60,000 average, going on to gross $32 million in North America, while his post-shutdown 2021 followup “The French Dispatch” grossed $1.3 million from 52 theaters for an average of just under $26,000, going on to gross just $16 million.
Also Read:
‘Asteroid City’ Lights Up Specialty Box Office With Best Theater Average Since 2016
While those films had a steady rollout over several weekends, Focus is expanding “Asteroid City” nationwide to 1,675 theaters this weekend and is looking for an opening weekend of $5 million-9 million. “Isle of Dogs” made just under $3 million in its second weekend from 165 theaters.
The immediate jump to nationwide expansion is part of the longterm changes that the specialty box office is seeing as it settles into a more diminished status quo after the pandemic. With theatrical windows shortened and films reaching homes faster than ever, independent and arthouse movies don’t have the time they once enjoyed before 2020 to gain word of mouth and have a weekslong if not monthslong run in theaters. (There are rare exceptions, like last year’s Best Picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”)
But Wes Anderson is a popular name among cinephiles, building his fanbase with hit films like “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and turning his latest works into event releases for a slice of the moviegoing audience that skews younger and urban.
Also Read:
Spielberg, Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson ‘Encouraged’ by TCM Conversations With David Zaslav
Insiders at Focus say they were heartened by the film’s strong performance at locations like Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, the Angelika Film Center in New York and the Landmark Sunset in Los Angeles, as it was unclear whether any limited release could earn such strong numbers in a post-COVID market when theaters like the Arclight Hollywood, which were so crucial to limited releases, have closed.
With the overall box office in a much better state than when “The French Dispatch” came out, a domestic box office total for “Asteroid City” better than that 2021 film’s $16 million would be a win for both Focus and arthouse theaters.
Also releasing this weekend is Sony/Columbia’s R-rated comedy “No Hard Feelings,” starring Jennifer Lawrence as a bankrupt woman hired by the parents of a deeply introverted 19-year-old to “date his brains out” before he goes to college.
Also Read:
‘No Hard Feelings’ Review: Jennifer Lawrence Lights Up This Witty and Genuine Rom-Com
“No Hard Feelings” is projected for an opening weekend of around $12 million, which would be an improvement over the $8 million opening of Sony’s 2017 female-fronted raunchy comedy “Rough Night.” But “No Hard Feelings” carries a steeper price tag with a reported $45 million budget before marketing, compared to $20 million for “Rough Night.”
“No Hard Feelings” is part of the Sony strategy that CEO Tom Rothman espoused at CinemaCon, which is to release the sort of films in theaters that have become more infrequent in a franchise-driven marketplace. Upcoming films like the romcom “Anyone But You” and the GameStop meme-stock biopic “Dumb Money” are also part of this strategy.
With its salacious premise, “No Hard Feelings” has received mixed-to-positive reviews with a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 65%, so it will need to win over younger audiences who might be nostalgic for 2000s teen comedies like “Superbad” to have a chance of legging out and turning a profit.
