‘Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?’ is All Smiles With $10K Per-Screen Average

Is the the Man who is Tall Happy Still 1

Not surprisingly, the box office winner for new documentaries over the weekend was the new Michel Gondry feature, Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?: An Animated Conversation With Noam Chomsky. It had both the best opening and the best per-screen average, the latter being $9,645. For all docs in theaters, it fell short of Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie, which is one of only two nonfiction films to see an increase in revenue over last weekend (the other is I Am Divine). Fellow new release Narco Cultura, meanwhile, had a decent one-screen debut and average of $6,093.

Three other newcomers, Bettie Page Reveals All, Watermark (the latest from Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky, which I hadn’t even realized was coming out) and 42-year-old Roman Polanski production Weekend of a Champion, in updated re-release, clumped together around in the $4K area, while all other continuing docs had drastic drops in their takes over the last few days. It just doesn’t seem to have been a good weekend for box office in general, fiction or non.

Here is the reported weekend box office for 11/22/13–11/24/13, including new and continuing releases:

1. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa — $3,433,864

2. The Armstrong Lie — $43,075

3. Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?— $28,934

4. Muscle Shoals— $13,780

5. Generation Iron— $10,200

6. Narco Cultura— $6,093

7. Spinning Plates— $5,827

8. The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology— $5,679

9. 20 Feet From Stardom— $5,308

10. Inequality for All— $5,079

11. Bettie Page Reveals All— $4,846

12. Watermark— $4,828

13. Weekend of a Champion— $4,100

14. Meerkats— $4,643

15. God Loves Uganda— $3,599

16. I Am Divine— $2,007

17. Sweet Dreams— $995

18. Flying Monsters 3D— $874

19. Good Ol’ Freda— $693

20. Let the Fire Burn— $678

21. The Act of Killing— $637

22. The Ghosts In Our Machine— $471

23. The Trials of Muhammad Ali— $392

24. When Comedy Went to School— $373

25. Design Is One— $214

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

  1. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa— $95m ($128m worldwide)
  2. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain — $32.2m
  3. One Direction: This Is Us — $28.9m ($66.6m worldwide)
  4. Hubble 3D (IMAX) — $4.9m
  5. 20 Feet From Stardom — $4.8m
  6. Metallica Through the Never— $3.4m
  7. Unstoppable— $3.2m
  8. To the Arctic (IMAX) — $2.9m
  9. Flying Monsters— $2.6m
  10. The Gatekeepers — $2.4m
  11. Blackfish — $2.1m
  12. Space Station 3D (IMAX) — $1.9m
  13. Stories We Tell — $1.6m
  14. Born to Be Wild (IMAX) — $1.56m
  15. Girl Rising — $1.53m
  16. Inequality for All— $1.2m
  17. Under the Sea 3D— $1.1m
  18. Generation Iron— $814k
  19. 56 Up — $700k
  20. Searching For Sugar Man — $686k
  21. Deep Sea 3D (IMAX) — $668k
  22. Salinger— $576k
  23. Muscle Shoals— $607k
  24. Chasing Ice — $530k
  25. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs — $510k

Data pulled from Box Office Mojo and IMDb and Deadline and The Numbers.

(Editor in Chief)

Christopher Campbell is the founding editor of Nonfics.