Indie Box Office Bloodbath: Awards Season Is Driving Films Off a Cliff
Everyone is caught in the 2,000-screen trap. Plus: Congress demands answers on Paramount & Trump
Welcome to the Jamboree, my weekly takes on the industry’s passing parade.
Lord knows the indie sector hasn’t had it easy lately. But in recent months, their approach to the tough times has reminded me of the guerrilla tactics of the Judean People’s Front in the face of calamity:
Every weekend, another hopeful indie bright light, coming off relatively strong success on the festival circuit, sails forth under enormous Oscar buzz to open on 2,000 screens and… die.
Almost immediately.
Last weekend, we saw Mubi open Die My Love with Jennifer Lawrence in nearly 2,000 theaters, generating $2.6 million in ticket sales. Meanwhile, new distributor Black Bear debuted Christy — with the infinitely buzzable Sydney Sweeney, in a performance that had garnered best actress talk after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival — with just $1.3 million from 2,100 theaters. These follow a whole season of much-heralded debuts leading to box office bellyflops, including Jennifer Lopez’s Kiss of the Spider Woman from Roadside Attractions ($891,046 opening on 1,331 screens) and Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine (the A24 title opened with a comparatively massive $5.8 million opening on 3,345 screens).
So what the hell is going on? “Bankable” stars have always had box office misses when they stray from their core audiences, but never to the point of not breaking seven figures in their opening weekend. We’re hitting lows that show us there is no floor anymore to how badly a movie can perform in these times. Have the indie distributors forgotten how to market their films? Are they drunk?
This week, The Ankler launched Crowd Pleaser, a collaboration with Letterboxd. For the first issue, ace reporter Matthew Frank took to the road, visiting the movie theaters of America, where — from the Redwood Forests to the Gulf Stream waters — attendance in October dipped to a degree unimaginable before Covid. Well, and actually unimaginable all the way back to 1997.
Among his findings, from the Lyric Cinema in Spearman, Tex.:
Gary indulges me as I ask my litany of questions about the state of his theater. He tells me not a single person showed up for The Smashing Machine, A24’s failed mixed-martial arts drama with Dwayne Johnson, the week before, and why, after Covid hit, he just knew things wouldn’t be the same again.
(Read it all.)
Openings like this aren’t so much a harbinger of doom as doom itself, a sickness spreading over the land, devouring its targets whole.
So, what is actually happening out there? And why does it seem to be hitting indie releases like the bubonic plague?
Okay, some of you aren’t going to like this, but here goes: