One of the realities of box office is that, the more screens your movie is playing on, the harder it gets to maintain a high per-screen average. Exhibit A is this week's Indie Box-Office Roundup, in which the top 9 per-screen averages for the past weekend were for films playing on one or two screens. So if you're rooting for the film that's playing around the corner, I'm afraid you're out of luck.
That is, unless you live around the corner from New York's Angelika Film Center. In which case, good news- the Angelika exclusive Chapter 27 (Peace Arch Entertainment) ruled the indie box office. J.P. Schaefer's drama about Mark David Chapman (better known as the scumbag who murdered John Lennon) weathered a barrage of middling-to-poor reviews to bring in an impressive haul of $13,910 on a single screen. Credit both the historical interest and the hype surrounding the performance (or at least the DeNiro-like weight gain) of star Jared Leto. If nothing else, the upstarts at Peach Arch deserve props for doing what many major studios could not- they actually made money off a movie starring Lindsay Lohan.
The weekend's top holdover was Laura Dunn's documentary The Unforeseen (Cinema Guild), which was filmed in Texas and opened solely in Austin, attracting $12,877 worth of local fans over the weekend.
Other notable new releases included the gay-themed A Four Letter Word (Embrem Entertainment), ThinkFilm's Italian-language My Brother Is An Only Child, and Aleksandr Sokurov's latest film, Alexandra. It's a little strange to see a film by a director like Sokurov embraced by audiences, even if they're big-city arthouse audiences. But hey, I'll take it.
Finally, coming in at #10 was the only film playing on more than two screens to make the list, The Weinstein Company's Under the Same Moon. The film continues to be an arthouse crowdpleaser, with its weekend take of $2,250,081 putting it just below the overall top 10 for the weekend.
Top 10, Weekend of March 28-30:
1. Chapter 27 [Peace Arch Entertainment] ($13,910 per screen)
2. The Unforeseen [Cinema Guild] ($12,877)
3. A Four Letter Word [Embrem Entertainment] ($12,101)
4. Alexandra [Cinema Guild] ($9,401)
5. My Brother Is An Only Child [ThinkFilm] ($9,357)
6. The Singing Revolution [Abramorama Entertainment] ($8,244)
7. Love Songs [IFC Films] ($6,651)
8. Hats Off [Canobie Films] ($6,570)
9. Backseat [Truly Indie] ($5,816)
10. Under The Same Moon [The Weinstein Company] ($5,769)
Source: IndieWire.
