With a scorching $27,204 per-theatre-average, Saul Dibb’s “The
Duchess” found 2008’s second highest specialty average (behind
arguable inclusion “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl”) and gave the
competitive fall season a royal beginning. In 7 locations, the
Paramount Vantage release grossed $190,426. A slew of other, lower-
profile films also found decent numbers, including a Texas screening
of Chris Eska’s “August Evening,” the debut of Stuart Townsend’s
“Battle in Seattle” and the second weekend of yoga doc “Enlighten Up!”
After a generally favorable screening at the Toronto International
Film Festival, Saul Dibb’s “The Duchess” found itself high atop the iW
BOT this weekend. The Keira Knightley-Ralph Fiennes starrer, a
dramatized chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana,
Duchess of Devonshire, scored the second-highest iW BOT debut in 2008
(after Patricia Rozema’s “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl”). The film
grossed $190,426 on 7 screens for a whopping average of $27,204.
The film found itself only moderately under the opening averages of
two of the most successful recent royal accounts, Stephen Frears’ 2006
“The Queen,” which averaged $40,671 on 3 runs in its debut weekend,
and Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 “Elizabeth,” which averaged $30,570 on 9
runs. It far surpassed Kapur’s 2008 follow-up, “Elizabeth: The Golden
Age,” which averaged $3,075 last October on a perhaps incomparable
2,001 theaters.
“We were very pleased with the grosses from this past weekend,” said
“Duchess” distributor Paramount Vantage’s Senior Vice-President Kevin
Grayson in an interview with indieWIRE. “The film showed very good
success at our core theatres on both coasts with strong per screen
averages at all our locations.” The film played particularly well with
women, as Grayson had expected, and will slowly find more theaters in
the coming weeks. “We are expanding our initial runs [in New York, Los
Angeles and Toronto] as well as introducing the film into the top 20
markets in a limited fashion,” he said. “That combined with Keira’s
strong cross over ability, good word of mouth and solid reviews we
feel we are on the right road to reach and exceed our goals.”
However, it might increasingly become a rocky road for “The Duchess”
to maintain this weekend’s success. The next two weekends alone see
the openings of potential specialty powerhouses like Jonathan Demme’s
“Rachel Getting Married,” Larry Charles’ “Religulous” and Fernando
Meirelles’s “Blindness.”
Though without the backing of a “Duchess”-like studio subsidiary, a
wealth of other films crowded the iW BOT’s top slots with less-
dramatic but certainly promising numbers. Redwood Palms release of
“Battle in Seattle” opened on 8 screens and found a decent $46,903
gross. Stuart Townsend’s fictionalized account of the 1999 riots to
stop a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle averaged $5,863,
from a $9,718 high at New York’s Angelika Film Center to a $2,188 low
at Minneapolis’ Uptown Theatre. “Seattle” will battle the box office
at 11 additional theaters this upcoming weekend, including in Chicago,
Boston and Detroit.
“Seattle” ranked behind two iW BOT underdogs. Maya Releasing’s “August
Evening,” which opened to a disappointing $3,296 at New York’s Village
East Cinema two weekends ago, managed $11,033 from its debut weekend
at San Antonio’s Santikos Bijou Theatre. Directed by Texas native
Chris Eska, “Evening” won the John Cassavetes Award at the 2007 Gotham
Awards, and now has a cumulative gross of $15,576. It opens in Los
Angeles this Friday.
Just behind “Evening” was the surprising second weekend of Kate
Churchill’s yoga documentary, “Enlighten Up!,” which grossed an
impressive $8,598 in its sole run at the Kendall Square Cinema in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. That takes “Enlighten”‘s total up to $20,397
after two weekends. And while one must consider that the screenings
did include actual free yoga classes led before select screenings,
there is still something to be said for such grassroots marketing.
Finally, in what might be one of the year’s biggest – and most
expected – specialty disasters, Empire Film Group opened long-shelved
2007 Sundance entry “Hounddog,” best known for its Dakota Fanning rape
scene, on 11 screens. It averaged $1,249.
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