Original Coverage & Source Attribution: scottmendelson.substack.com
DC Studios’ Clayface began its domestic box office run with an entirely fine $3.5 million in Thursday previews. It arrives with decent reviews (75% fresh and a 6.6/10 average critic score on Rotten Tomatoes) while filling a Halloween-season horror movie gap. Resident Evil is mostly wrapping up, and Other Mommy is becoming a one-weekend wonder. Initial earnings are on par with the $3-$4 million pre-weekend cumes of Longlegs, Iron Lung, Scream V, Other Mommy, and Birds of Prey. So unless it proves as fan-fronted, and thus frontloaded, as Markiplier’s video game adaptation or the last Evil Dead movie ($13.5 million from a $2.3 million Thursday), we’re looking at a $25-$30 million opening weekend.
I’m not inclined to argue that DC Studios’ overall stock will increase based on the moderate success of a $40 million, R-rated body horror flick. That’s arguably playing the game on easy or easier mode, and (hopefully) opening about on par with an outright original like Other Mommy isn’t a huge accomplishment for a major comic book brand. But I digress. And for the record, if Clayface opens big enough (and ideally with decent consumer polling and a healthy weekend multiplier), whether it ranks #1 or #2 at the weekend box office (beyond a massively expanding You Can See Everything) is mere trivia. As always, raw gross matters far more than the weekend ranking.
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s buzzy (and quite enjoyable, natch) Wicker earned a record-for-Black Bear $620k yesterday. Starring Olivia Coleman as an older fisherwoman who hires Peter Dinklage’s basket weaver to craft a living “wicker husband” (Alexander Skarsgård), the pleasantly weird and surprisingly dark comedy nearly doubled the $385k that Jason Statham’s Shelter earned in pre-weekend revenue amid its $5.5 million domestic Fri-Sun debut. I’m not arguing that the reviewed (92% fresh with a 7.5/10 average critic score) high-concept romantacy can clear $8.8 million over the weekend. However, even Twilight Saga-level frontloading gets it above $3.1 million, making it Black Bear’s second-biggest launch as it nears its first full year of domestic distribution.
I don’t want to hype expectations to where a $2.5 million debut feels disappointing, but I’m officially impressed. If this Sundance pick-up becomes the closest thing the studio has had thus far to an unmitigated domestic theatrical success (Tuner admittedly legged out ot $4.5 million this past summer), it’ll be another example of (to paraphrase Lisa Laman on the podcast, natch) the smaller/newer distributors finding their biggest breakouts by distributing films that otherwise wouldn’t exist in the conventional studio ecosystem. Whether it’s Bleecker Street’s pro-shot of Hadestown clearing $20 million or Fathom’s $23 million domestic pre-YouTube theatrical gross for the series finale of The Amazing Digital Circus, remember that Dogma and Fahrenheit 9/11 put Lionsgate on the map.
Speaking of breakout documentaries (organic segue… achieved), A24’s You Can See Everything closed out its first week with $25.65 million. After a $15.6 million opening weekend, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s epic earned $2.58 million on Monday, $2.63 million (+2%) on Tuesday, $2.6 million (-1%) on Wednesday, and $2.24 million on Thursday (-14%). That’s frankly remarkable staying power, especially for an R-rated, three-hour documentary. Expanding from 855 theaters to 2,655 screens, we could indeed see a jump on par with Obsession (+39%) for a $22 million weekend gross. Or it could “only” jump as high as Borat (which had a similar post-debut screen bump in 2006) and “only” earn $17 million in weekend two.
Just for fun, if it jumps more than 58% this weekend for a $24.7 million-or-more second-weekend gross, it’ll set a new record for a second-weekend jump (suck it, Oliver and Company!) for any film that A) opened on at least 600 screens and B) did NOT open in December. Anything above 45% puts it above Adventures in Babysitting for the biggest such launch for any film not released around Christmas or Thanksgiving. Are these hard predictions? Not necessarily, but I’d rather do the research now than scramble to track down the numbers tomorrow morning amid a flood of newbie-specific Friday box office news for the likes of Clayface, Wildwood and Clara and the Sun.
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