Specialty Box Office: ‘Silver Linings’ Keeps Showing Its Legs In Slow Weekend; ‘The Other Son’ Hits $1 Million Mark
With few specialty openers to compete with, a handful of November releases benefited from a calm before an anticipated Christmas storm that begins next weekend with the limited debuts of “Amour” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”
The film that perhaps had the impressive performance was David O. Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook,” which The Weinstein Company is releasing very carefully (particularly after “The Master” underperformed back in September). After a somewhat disappointing start, the film’s slow-and-steady releasing is beginning to pay off considerably. This weekend it held on 371 screens for the second weekend in a row and dropped off just 4% in grosses, placing in the overall top 10 where it had by far the second best per-theater-average ($5,617), behind only “The Hobbit.” The film’s total now stands at $16,954,049 — surpassing the gross of “The Master” with much more to come.
Four other holdovers — “Hyde Park on Hudson,” “Hitchcock,” “Anna Karenina” and “Rust and Bone” — found respectable numbers as well, to varying degrees. The former two expanded significantly, finding 266% and 52% jumps in grosses, respectively. “Bone” expanded ever-so-slightly from 4 to 6 screens and maintained an impressive $9,340 average, the highest of any limited release. “Anna” actually lost screens, but only lost 35% of its grosses in the process, crossing the $8 million mark.
A less discussed release also crossed a big milestone this weekend, as Cohen Media Group’s French import “The Other Son” became the two year old distributor’s second $1 million hit in its 8th weekend out.
See on the next page a rundown of specialty films reporting estimates on the next page, ranked by per-theater-average.
The Debuts:
1. Any Day Now
Distributor: Music Box Films
Weeks in Release: 1
Gross: $41,000
Theaters: 16
Average: $2,563
Cumulative Total: $41,000
The Holdovers
1. Rust and Bone
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Weeks in Release: 4
Gross: $56,040
Theaters: 6 (up from 4)
Average: $9,340
Cumulative Total: $131,319
2. Hyde Park on Hudson
Distributor: Focus Features
Weeks in Release: 2
Gross: $297,406
Theaters: 36 (up from 4)
Average: $8,261
Cumulative Total: $409,426
3. Silver Linings Playbook
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Weeks in Release: 4
Gross: $2,084,000
Theaters: 371 (even from last week)
Average: $5,617
Cumulative Total: $16,954,049
4. Beware of Mr. Baker
Distributor: Snagfilms/Insurgent Media
Weeks in Release: 3
Gross: $4,868
Theaters: 1 (even from last week)
Average: $4,868
Cumulative Total: $45,706
5. Burn: One Year on the Front Lines of the Battle To Save Detroit
Distributor: Area23a
Weeks in Release: 6
Gross: $12,760
Theaters: 4 (even from last week)
Average: $3,190
Cumulative Total: $105,137
6. Anna Karenina
Distributor: Focus Features
Weeks in Release: 6
Gross: $98,103
Theaters: 409 (down from 422)
Average: $2,440
Cumulative Total: $8,356,406
7. Hitchcock
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Weeks in Release: 4
Gross: $1,085,000
Theaters: 561 (up from 183)
Average: $1,934
Cumulative Total: $3,049,212
8. Brooklyn Castle
Distributor: Producers Distribution Agency
Weeks in Release: 9
Gross: $3,001
Theaters: 2 (down from 4)
Average: $1,501
Cumulative Total: $188,335
9. Hecho en Mexico
Distributor: Lionsgate/Pantelion
Weeks in Release: 3
Gross: $13,500
Theaters: 10 (down from 26)
Average: $1,350
Cumulative Total: $145,290
10. The Other Son
Distributor: Cohen Media Group
Weeks in Release: 8
Gross: $49,905
Theaters: 39 (down from 41)
Average: $1,280
Cumulative Total: $1,042,741
11. Holy Motors
Distributor: Indomina Media
Weeks in Release: 9
Gross: $25,194
Theaters: 21
Average: $1,199
Cumulative Total: $445,328
12. Chasing Ice
Distributor: Submarine Deluxe
Weeks in Release: 5
Gross: $56,040
Theaters: 53 (down from 57)
Average: $1,066
Cumulative Total: $603,031
