‘GMO OMG’ is a Single-Screen Hit With $15K Opening

While the One Direction documentary This Is Us continues to be the obvious top-grossing doc at the box office, adding another $2.5m to its total, the much smaller profile film GMO OMG was the real nonfiction hit of the weekend with a single-screen total of $15.1k. Turns out people are still really into food industry issue docs, at least in NYC where it opened on Friday. Directed by Jeremy Seifert, this one looks at the extent to which American foods are from genetically modified agriculture.

Compare that take to another new film’s single-screen opening weekend gross: Herb & Dorothy 50×50 (review) earned just $6.2k, which is better than the original Herb & Dorothy did for a debut per-screen-average five years ago. So, Insidious: Chapter 2 isn’t the only sequel to out-do the original right out of the gate. Meanwhile, fashion doc Mademoiselle C did decent debut business with $14.3k on six screens and fellow newcomer The Informant played on two screens for a weekend total of only $2.9k.

Ongoing theatrical runs and their latest weekend takes include the following:

1. Salinger $44k
2. Blackfish $32.8k (pushing the film nearly over the $2m mark)
3. The Act of Killing $22.5k
4. Good Ol’ Freda $14.6k
5. Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve $13.7k
6. Spark: A Burning Man Story $5.1k
7. Rising From Ashes $4.7k
8. Red Obsession $2.6k
9. Our Nixon $2.5k
10. When Comedy Went to School $2.4k
11. Out of the Clear Blue Sky $2.2k
12. More Than Honey $2.1k
13. A Band Called Death $1.6k
14. Fire in the Blood $1.5k
15. La Maison De La Radio $1.3k
16. The Trials of Muhammad Ali $1.1k
17. Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay $1.1k
18. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me $1k
19. Stories We Tell $0.3k
20. Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie $0.2k

And here is the current top 25 doc box office for 2013 (note the changeover from millions to thousands):

1. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain — $32.2m
2. One Direction: This Is Us — $27m ($58m worldwide)
3. 20 Feet From Stardom — $4.5m
4. To the Arctic (IMAX) — $3m
5. The Gatekeepers — $2.4m
6. Blackfish — $2m
7. Space Station 3D (IMAX) — $1.95m
8. Stories We Tell — $1.6m
9. Born to Be Wild (IMAX) — $1.57m
10. Girl Rising — $1.53m
     — -
11. 56 Up — $700k
12. Searching For Sugar Man — $686k
13. Deep Sea 3D (IMAX) — $662k
14. Chasing Ice — $530k
15. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs — $510k
16. Sound City — $421k
17. The Act of Killing — $420k
18. Dirty Wars — $371k
19. Hava Nagila: The Movie — $369k
20. Koch — $343k
21. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga — $339k
22. West of Memphis — $288k
23. Room 237 — $263k
24. A Place at the Table — $231k
25. No Place On Earth — $200k

Data pulled from Box Office Mojo and IMDb and Deadline.