‘Asteroid City’ Hits A $9 Million Weekend High For Wes Anderson – Specialty Box Office

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Focus Features expanded Asteroid City to the highest grossing weekend for a Wes Anderson Film with a projected three-day estimate of $9 million from 1,675 theaters – no. 6 at the domestic box office — pushing the film’s cume to $10.2 million. It opened last weekend in six locations.

Some 64% of moviegoers were 35 or younger. Males topped females by 66% to 44%.

New York was the biggest market — not highly unusual to have NY in the lead for an arthouse film, with LA a close second. Alamo Drafthouses turned in a hefty 8.8% share with over $16.3k per theater. Landmark locations were also strong with 3.1% of the total weekend gross at 21 locations, for a PTA beating $9.8k.

Top five theaters were Alamo’s just (re)opened New Mission in San Francisco; Alamo Brooklyn; Angelika NY; Coolidge Corner in Boston; and Landmark Sunset in LA. The — which reopened last weekend with an Asteroid City takeover off all five screens and special pop-up experience — did $37k over two days.

The star-studded film about a desert convention of star gazers and space cadets, had the highest PTA of the top ten. Focus may add some locations next weekend but nothing major, said Lisa Bunnell, President of Distribution. “It’s fantastic to see the best weekend that Wes Anderson has ever had at the box office reignite the specialty marketplace,” she said.

As Deadline noted, the wide break of Asteroid City beat both the fourth weekend of Anderson’s 2014 title Grand Budapest Hotel, which did $8.5M at 977 theaters and its wide expansion at 1,263 theaters in weekend five which posted $6.1M, and has a good shot at surpassing the final cume of Anderson’s previous movie, The French Dispatch, which ended its Stateside run at $16.1M.

Elsewhere, A24’s Past Lives continued to expand, passing $3 million on 276 screens in week three with blowout reviews and word-of-mouth for Celine Song’s feature debut (97/92 RT Critic and Audience, 94 Metacritic Must See). The English and Korean language romance will add locations throughout the summer.

New specialty openings: Music Box Films’ Revoir Paris (Paris Memories) opened at IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center in New York to a projected weekend gross of just over $8k at the two locations. Expands to Los Angeles and other cities on Friday.

Roadside Attractions’ The Last Rider, a doc about U.S. cycling and Tour de France winner Greg LeMond saw an estimated three-day gross of $53,740 on 105 screens, for a PSA of $512.

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