V is for Victory and Vera

October 19, 2004

Vera Drake, which opened last Sunday, topped the Per Theatre Charts this week with $20,435. It's Sunday to Sunday performance was very flat, which bodes well for its legs. Three other films topped $10,000 per theatre on this week's chart. Coming up in second place was last week's winner, I ♥ Huckabees, which earned an average of $14,075 in 65 theatres. This film is holding up very well with its increased theatre count, but may be too, 'out there' to find much mainstream success. Being Julia came in third with just over $100,000 in 8 theatres for an average of $12,641. If Annette Bening receives the recognition she deserves for her performance then this film will earn a lot more, but it may take till the DVD release before that happens. The last film to hit $10,000 is the self-distributed Guiana 1838. The film added another theatre, doubling its theatre count, but just managed to keep above the $10,000 per theatre average for the fourth week in a row with $10,683. Very impressive.

This past week also saw some milestones reached for several Per Theatre Charts alumnus:

  • Silver City started with a weak per theatre average and couldn't even maintain that; chalk it up to political overload. Still, the film did manage to cross $1 million over the weekend.
  • The Mother, which debuted on DVD last week, has seen some increased strength in its box office over the past couple of weeks and that helped it top $1 million.
  • The Motorcycle Diaries's second weekend in the top ten helped it pass $5 million.
  • Garden State may have seen its peak box office a long time ago, but it still doing well enough to hit $25 million. That puts it ahead of Twisted, despite having a production budget 20 times smaller than the latter film. Two last notes, the film is in the Top 50 of films never to play in more than 1000 theatres and in the top 10 for films never to make it into the top 10. (The champion for that last category is In the Bedroom.)
  • Coincidentally, Napoleon Dynamite also hit another milestone with $40 million. That's more than Catwoman managed with its $100 million production budget.

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Filed under: Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, The Motorcycle Diaries, I Heart Huckabees, Vera Drake, The Mother, Silver City, Guiana 1838