Neon’s standout romance about a young woman in Oslo churning though career choices and boyfriends passed $1 million this weekend on 265 screens, up from 49. With marketing in high gear and strong word of mouth, the Oscar Best International Feature nominee will continue to expand next week.
Worst Person grossed $500,299 for three days (Friday-$140,281; Saturday-$191,948; Sunday $168,000) for a PSA of $1,888 and a cume of $1.1 million, continuing to draw auds to its mix of pathos, humor, insight and strong storytelling. It crossed the $1M mark in just three weeks with a limited print count — faster than other recent specialized fare of note, the distrib observed, from Parallel Mothers and Red Rocket to Drive My Car and C’mon C’mon.
An est. $93,500 Presidents Day brings the pic’s 4-day holiday weekend to a $593,729 gross, $2,240 PSA and cume over $1.2M.
The film, whose star Renate Reinsve won Best Actress at Cannes where it premiered, shot out of the gate Feb. 6, jolting a hard to please specialty market whose core older demos have been slow to return to theaters. It grossed $135,042 in Week 1 at four NY/LA theaters for a popping per screen average of $33,768. (It’s received two BAFTA nominations, Best Foreign Language Film and Actress for Reinsve.)
Neon had cited early presales and social traction for Worst Person launching with the highest PSA of any foreign language film of the past two years afterParasiteandPortrait of a Lady on Fire; in the top 20 PSAs of all time for a foreign language film; and the largest opening for any Norwegian film. Word of mouth since release has been strong.
Elsewhere in specialty:
Drive My Car, the slow-burn surprise of Oscar season from Janus Films/Sideshow, will gross an estimated $247,875 over the four-day holiday weekend on 213 screens — it’s biggest expansion — for a PSA of $1,379 and a new cume of $1.56M (3-day estimate is $209,375). It’s Week 13 for Ryusuki Hamaguchi’s poetic three-hour tale of a grief stricken Japanese theater director and his driver.
Newcomer Strawberry Mansion from Music Box Films grossed a projected $28,784 on 28 screens for a PSA of $1,028. In the romance-fantasy, an unassuming dream auditor gets swept up in a cosmic journey.
And Ted K from Neon’s Super LTD posted opening weekend grosses of $28,300 also on 28 screens for a PSA of $868 (Friday-$8,500; Saturday-$8,300; Sunday-$7,500). The distrib is estimating a Monday gross of $4,500 for $24,300. A former university professor living a life of complete seclusion in a wooden cabin in the Montana mountains becomes America’s infamous terrorist, the Unabomber.
The Cursed from LD Entertainment. Not exactly specialty, this reimagining of the classic werewolf legend was marketed as a straight horror movie on 1,687 screens. It grossed $1.72M for a PSA of $1,021 (Friday-$600,335; Saturday-$667,484; Sunday-$453,889). With an estimated $226,944 Monday, the 4-day gross is approaching $1.95M for the film written and directed by Sean Ellis that debuted at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival under the title Eight For Silver.
Holdover Compartment No. 6 from Sony Pictures Classics, now in Week 4, earned $15,084 on 11 screens (last week 8), a PSA of $1,371 and cume of $68,579.