Box Office: Self-Distributed ‘American Promise’ Makes Good With Top Doc Screen Average
Continuing to rise up the charts — the documentary chart at least — Inequality for All earned another bundle over $100k over the weekend and easily took the #1 slot away from the Metallica hybrid doc. Let’s let it celebrate that victory for a moment before the upcoming Bad Grandpa steals the throne for a while (probably immediately becoming the top-grossing doc of the year in the process). I’ll give Jacob Kornbluth’s economy film starring Robert Reich two more weekends to break the $1m mark.
For new releases, the big story belongs to American Promise, a film that’s been in the works for 13 years. In two theaters only, it managed the best per-screen average for a documentary and total $18k. That’s really good for a self-distributed effort with no-name directors, no-name subjects and no real issue. Fellow opener Birth of the Living Dead fared much less with just over $1k total over six screens, though we’ll see how it does when it gets to NYC next month.
Here is the reported weekend box office (with averages in parenthesis) for 10/18/13–10/20/13, including new and continuing releases:
1. Inequality for All — $128k ($1.2k)
2. Metallica Through the Never — $71k ($1.6k)
3. Generation Iron — $55k ($1.7k)
4. American Promise — $18k ($9.2k)
5. Linsanity — $17k ($1.9k)
6. Broadway Idiot — $12k ($1.9k)
7. After Tiller — $10k ($1.6k)
8. 20 Feet From Stardom — $8k ($0.5k)
9. When Comedy Went to School — $4k ($0.7k)
10. God Loves Uganda — $3.2k ($3.2k)
11. Meerkats — $2.8k ($2.8k)
12. Let the Fire Burn — $2.0k ($1k)
13. Design Is One — $1.9k ($1.9k)
14. Free the Mind — $1.4k ($0.7k)
15. Birth of the Living Dead — $1.24k ($0.2k)
16. Flying Monsters 3D — $1.21
17. The Act of Killing — $0.5k ($0.3k)
And here is the current top 25 doc box office for 2013 (note the changeover from millions to thousands):
- Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain — $32.2m
- One Direction: This Is Us — $28.9m ($66.6m worldwide)
- Hubble 3D (IMAX) — $4.9m
- 20 Feet From Stardom — $4.7m
- Unstoppable — $3.20m
- Metallica Through the Never — $3.3m
- To the Arctic (IMAX) — $2.9m
- The Gatekeepers — $2.4m
- Blackfish — $2.1m
- Space Station 3D (IMAX) — $1.9m
- Stories We Tell — $1.6m
- Born to Be Wild (IMAX) — $1.56m
- Girl Rising — $1.53m
- Flying Monsters — $1.49m
- Under the Sea 3D — $1.1m
— - - Inequality for All — $778k
- 56 Up — $700k
- Generation Iron — $697k
- Searching For Sugar Man — $686k
- Deep Sea 3D (IMAX) — $668k
- Salinger — $576k
- Chasing Ice — $530k
- Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs — $510k
- The Act of Killing — $443k
- Sound City — $421k
Data pulled from Box Office Mojo and IMDb and Deadline and The Numbers.