The independent sector has delivered outstanding results at the North American box office recently, with several films in particular riding the Oscar wave to numbers that may have been beyond the filmmakers’ wildest dreams six months ago.
Who would have imagined that Flow, the dialogue-free animated Oscar winner from Latvia, would earn $4.7m through Sideshow and Janus Films? Or that this year’s documentary winner No Other Land, a political lightning rod of such heightened sensitivity that no US distributor stepped up to acquire it, would surge past $1m after the Oscar ceremony?
Perhaps less unexpected but equally laudable, Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has taken Walter Salles’ Brazilian best international feature winner I’m Still Here to more than $6m, while Rich Peppiatt’s Irish-language Oscar submission Kneecap has gone to more than $1.1m.
The annual awards season ebbs and flows in its impact at the North America box office. A year ago, the Oscars sweep for summer 2023 tentpole Oppenheimer did not yield much incremental revenue in cinemas, but the battle for major prizes this year between well-timed indies Anora, The Brutalist and Conclave reaped rich box-office dividends, with Searchlight Pictures’ A Complete Unknown and A Real Pain (the latter a winner for supporting actor) similarly caught in the updraft.
Anora, winner of best picture and four other Oscars, had earned $20.4m through Neon at time of writing — a significant leap from director Sean Baker’s previous best at the North America box office (The Florida Project, $5.9m). Brady Corbet achieved an even bigger jump with The Brutalist starring best actor winner Adrien Brody: A24’s $16.3m total compares with Corbet’s previous best of $727,000 in North America for Vox Lux.
Focus Features’ Conclave, with $32.6m to date, is this awards season’s big success story from UK producers (House Productions), while A24 did not need the halo of nominations to drive London-set romantic drama We Live In Time (lead-produced by SunnyMarch) to robust box office totaling $24.7m, released last October following a Toronto launch.
There have been other success stories, not all related to awards contenders, and particularly features not in the English language. The standout is China’s Ne Zha 2 on $20.2m and counting since its February 14 release through CMC Pictures, a sturdy number that reflects the film’s standing as the highest-grossing animation of all time at the global box office and the first Chinese film to cross $2bn.
Forays by Indian films have become a familiar sight and February release Chhaava has taken $4.8m through Yash Raj Films, while December release Pushpa: The Rule — Part 2 has grossed $13m through AA Films. Meanwhile, Hello, Love, Again from the Philippines became the country’s first film to open in the top 10 in North America last November and has earned $2.6m through Abramorama.
New sensation
Seasoned independent film executive Jonathan Sehring was as surprised as anybody after Flow triumphed at the Academy Awards on March 2. The partner at Sideshow, which alongside its distribution collaborator Janus Films acquired North American rights to the Cannes Un Certain Regard entry last May and got Payal Kapadia’s Indian Cannes hit All We Imagine As Light to $1.1m, thought he had seen it all after many years scoring hits at IFC Films.
“This is one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history,” says Sehring of the Latvian tale about a nameless cat and a motley crew of animals who voyage through a flood-ravaged world. Animator Gints Zilbalodis used open-source software and beat heavyweight contenders like DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot and Pixar’s Inside Out 2.
Sideshow and Janus collaborated with associates Cinetic Marketing and others to build a release campaign that is thought to have cost less than $1m. They got celebrity endorsements on ads from Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Guillermo del Toro and Benny Safdie ahead of the November 22 release date.
The film made a splash when it opened in late November with $50,800 from two sites, expanding to 375 sites in week three — with the distribution partners working with Variance Films to book theatres, “AMC was on board in a big way. For us, that was new territory,” says Sehring. The team pushed the theatre count back up again from 119 to 139 after the Oscars and Sehring hopes Flow could end up on around $5m.
Cinetic Marketing also worked on No Other Land, the documentary by the Israeli-Palestinian collective of Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor about the destruction of the Palestinian Masafer Yatta villages by the Israeli army.
When no US distributors offered to buy the film months after its Berlinale 2024 world premiere, Cinetic and the filmmakers harnessed support from critics and festival programmers to raise awareness through premieres and screenings at Telluride, Toronto, New York and others.
“The [Academy’s] documentary branch was seeing it as it played in these different festivals,” says a Cinetic Marketing executive who worked on the campaign. “We built support, but this was different from your typical campaign when there’s money for lunches and screenings.”
Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras hosted one screening for voters. However, it was hard for the filmmakers to be on hand. A trip to New York Film Festival in early autumn was cut short when they flew back to their families after military activity in the region. An arduous process of checkpoints, visa requirements and complicated itineraries essentially kept Adra away until Oscar night.
Cinetic secured an awards-qualifying run at the prestigious Film Forum in New York, and scheduled a January 31 release date there. In November, Michael Tuckman Media came on to book theatres. Exhibitors’ appetite grew once No Other Land made it onto the Academy’s documentary shortlist on December 17. The film has played in politically diverse areas from Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona to Los Angeles and New York.
After the Oscar nominations on January 23, No Other Land debuted on an impressive $26,100, expanding to 22 venues in the second weekend, and more than 100 by Oscars weekend, when box office grew to $601,000 — more than the combined grosses of the other four documentary nominees. With the Academy Award under its belt, No Other Land expanded from 100 to 124 sites and stood at $1.7m after eight weekends.
The international feature Oscar triumph for SPC’s I’m Still Here proved a fillip for cinema operators, which by the time of the ceremony had little reason to root for the presumed favourite, Netflix’s Emilia Pérez. SPC co-president Tom Bernard and his partner Michael Barker had been negotiating for Salles’ biographical drama since script stage and were the first to see it. They built awareness on the back of prestige festival slots and strong critical reception that started at Venice and carried through Toronto and New York.
“We felt we had a chance for the nominations we got,” says Bernard. “You want to maximise momentum when the movie’s got the spotlight.” Salles and Torres attended voter screenings as SPC worked to get the film in front of voters. “If you get them to see the movie, you’re in great shape.”
After a one-week qualifying run in Los Angeles last November, the film officially opened on January 17 in five theatres. The theatre count expanded to more than 760 prior to the Oscars. “We’re closing in on $6m with no end in sight,” says the SPC co-president. As of March 24 the film stood at $6.1m.
Finding the audience
SPC acquired Kneecap, the Irish comedy biopic about the titular Irish rappers, after attending the Sundance 2024 premiere, taking North America and select territories. They built momentum with a SXSW screening and ran trailers on last summer’s tentpoles before the August 2 release in just over 700 theatres.
“The US audience enjoyed the humour and the ‘hip-hopness’ of it,” notes Bernard, who spread the word among the Academy’s international feature film committee members that this was a unique cultural event with a rebellious spirit. By the end of its theatrical run, two months after opening at number 12, the film had crossed $1m.
SPC is also enjoying success with the documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin by Bernard MacMahon. It has earned more than $10m in North America and $14m worldwide since opening exclusively on Imax for one week on February 7 and expanding into conventional theatres.
The company cut Imax and TikTok trailers, the latter garnering more than 2 million views. “Imax were incredible,” says Bernard. “They worked with us on social media and used their data to reach everyone that had ever seen a concert film at an Imax theatre.”
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