From 554 theaters to 69
Exhibitors dropped 485 of them. That is 87.5 percent of the opening booking. The 69 that remained are 12.5 percent of 554. Both sites still list 554 as the widest release, which means the run never added a theater. It opened at its maximum and then gave most of those rooms back after one week.
The daily split shows the dollar drop and the per-theater drop as two different things. Friday, October 23, was $3,786, about $55 a theater. Opening Friday was $65,365 from 554 theaters, about $118 a theater. If these 69 rooms had matched that opening-Friday pace, the day would have come to about $8,100. They grossed $3,786. Saturday rose 58 percent, to $5,977, about $87 a theater, and was still 91 percent below the previous Saturday’s $68,824. Sunday was $3,554, about $52 a theater. Divide the weekend by 69 and the average is $193. The opening weekend averaged $341. At that earlier pace, the same 69 theaters would have grossed about $23,500. The gap between $188,749 and $13,317 is mostly the 485 theaters that left. The theaters that stayed also did less business per screen than the opening weekend.
The week before the cut is the useful comparison, because those days were still counted at 554 theaters. Monday, October 19, was $20,208. Tuesday was $29,046. Wednesday was $17,842. Thursday was $13,127. Monday through Thursday came to $80,223. Tuesday by itself was more than the entire second weekend. The Numbers’ weekly table puts the first seven days at $268,972, about $486 a theater for the week. The second weekend is about 5 percent of that week. A soft Tuesday in a 554-theater booking outgrossed three days in the booking that replaced it.
Legs of 1.50 means the total is one and a half times the opening weekend. Later weeks are what usually push that figure up, and this film has already lost the theaters that would do the work. The comparison Affirm invited, when it set the date, was The Forge. Deadline reported that The Forge had opened at No. 1 in Brazil and reported $9 million there, which is why the Kendricks shot a new Flywheel in Rio. Domestically, The Numbers lists The Forge at $6,659,508 in its opening weekend, 22.9 percent of a $29,123,632 total, and the film added theaters in week two. Flywheel’s opening is already two-thirds of a $282,289 total, and its widest count is the one it started with. No production budget for the remake has been published. A gross without that figure, and without the share of the ticket the theater keeps, cannot show whether the release covered its cost. The weekend establishes what the booking became.
The same Friday, a different film
The weekend chart has another faith title in the same range. The Numbers lists Angel and the Badman at $33,253 for October 23–25, from 104 theaters, about $320 a screen. That was a third weekend. The western had played the previous one in 1,270 theaters, after opening in 2,263. Saturday’s report had the Friday estimate and the cut to 104. The three-day total is now on the weekly table. The western is further into its run than Flywheel, and Angel is a different distributor from Affirm. The shared fact is the speed of the loss. Both films opened in the hundreds of theaters. Both were in double digits by the Friday of this past weekend. The rooms that remained averaged a few hundred dollars, $193 for the remake and $320 for the western.
The Numbers still lists a limited Brazilian release on November 12, under the title A virada: Ignição da alma. Mojo’s worldwide total equals the domestic $282,289. Affirm’s April release said Brazil and Latin America would get the film in September, a month before the United States. The English-language booking has now had its second weekend. The country named first in that announcement has not reported a gross, and the domestic run that went first is down to 69 theaters.
The daily tables on both sites stop at Sunday, October 25. Monday and Tuesday of the second week are not posted. The next Friday will show whether 69 theaters are still on the schedule. November 12 is the Brazilian date The Numbers is carrying. The U.S. result already in is a second weekend of $13,317, an opening that accounts for two-thirds of the money, and a first week at 554 theaters that was worth more on a Tuesday than the whole weekend after the cut.
