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After knocking it out of the park with Poor things last year, director Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone returned to the box office with Kinds of Kindness from Searchlight, which looks set to shake up a sluggish arthouse market with the best limited opening this year.
The best PTA in 2024 so far is The taste of things from IFC Films, which debuted to $43.4K on three screens in February. Kinds of Kindness at five locations in New York (Angelika, AMC Lincoln Square) and Los Angeles (AMC Burbank, AMC Grove, AMC Century City) will perhaps get ahead of that significantly. The market has been strange, so it’s hard to say to what extent. See you on Sunday.
Also this weekend, Thélma, which will please audiences with a terrific June Squibb, launches on 1,280 screens, the widest release ever from distributor Magnolia Pictures. A24 Janet Planet, the first feature film by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, debuts in New York. Vertical also offers its widest version with The exorcism with Russell Crowe.
Kinds of Kindness premiered at Cannes, see Deadline’s review, with Jesse Plemons winning Best Actor, then hit the global festival circuit. It was no. 1 in Lanthimos’ native Greece when it opens the weekend of May 30.
The film is divided into three different stories with the same cast – an anthology described as a “triptych fable, following a man without choices who attempts to take control of his own life; a police officer alarmed by the return of his wife who disappeared at sea and who appears to be another person; and a woman determined to find someone in particular with special abilities, destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader. The stories are named The death of RMF, RMF steals And RMF eats a sandwich – RFM being a silent man, bearded and wearing a monogrammed shirt.
Lanthimos (The poor things, the favorite, the lobster, Dogtooth) wrote the screenplay with collaborator Efthimis Filippou. Stone, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Poor things, and Plemons stars with Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, Joe Alwyn and Hunter Schafer. The cast made the rounds with Jimmy Kimmel Live! THE Today to show, Late Night with Seth Meyers And The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Produced by Ed Guiney of Element Pictures (The poor things, the favorites) and Andrew Lowe (Poor things), Kasia Malipan (Poor things), and Lanthimos.
Expands to approximately 500 theaters in major markets next week and over 1,000 the following.
Meanwhile, Magnolia bets big with Thélma, the lively, poignant Sundance comedy that it acquired outside of the festival in a competitive situation. Deadline’s review called Josh Margolin’s directorial debut a “hilarious twilight action comedy.”
June Squibb, Oscar nominee (Nebraska) landed her first leading role at age 94 as Thelma, an elderly grandmother scammed by a scammer posing as her 24-year-old grandson Daniel. She sends a large sum of money in the mail, no questions asked.
In real life, many millions have been lost to this common fraud. But Thelma, embarrassed and angry, does not accept and crosses Los Angeles on an electric scooter to find the crook and recover his money. Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus) it’s Daniel, the lazy guy who loves his grandmother. Parker Posey and Clark Gregg are her mother (Thelma’s daughter) and father (her son-in-law). The late Richard Roundtree is his sidekick Ben.
This is a film that most should see and love. But you have to see it. It’s about growing older, with an older star, at a time when older audiences in general are slow to return to the movies.
Magnolia CEO Dori Begley sees broader appeal. “Older audiences will still occasionally turn up for the right movie but, beyond that expected demographic, younger audiences have shown great affection for sharp-tongued women of a certain age and Josh has tapped into that expert this adoration,” she told Deadlne. “The team behind this film also comes largely from a younger generation who view their elders not as props for tired punchlines, but as wise, funny and entirely capable of directing intelligent comedy. Who better to embody this than June Squibb?
To get the film in front of as many eyeballs as possible, Magnolia has doubled down with this expansive release. “We knew that if we could bring it to a wider audience, everyone would fall in love.” Plus, “it’s great counterprogramming for a world on fire.”
“We were looking for a film to take on a bigger scale, but nothing really hit the mark until that first screening at Sundance. We were deeply impressed by (the director’s) skillful navigation between genres and his ability to imbue the film with a cross-generational appeal that completely avoids complacency – which is quite unusual in the specialist space.
Janet Planet of A24 opens at Lincoln Center and Angelika in New York and expands next week. This is the directorial debut of Annie Baker, winner of the Pulitzer in 2014 for her play The film.
Set in rural western Massachusetts, it stars newcomer Zoe Zielger as 11-year-old Lacy, who abandons camp to spend the summer of 1991 at home, fascinated by her own imagination and attention. of his mother, Janet, played by Julianne Nicholson. With Elias Koteas, Will Patton and Sophie Okonedo
The film had its world premiere in Telluride, see Deadline review, screening at the New York Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival.
With Elias Koteas, Will Patton and Sophie Okonedo.
It’s not a specialty, but it’s independent. The largest version of Vertical to date, The exorcism, by Joshua John Miller is released on more than 2,000 screens. Stars Russell Crowe as a troubled actor who begins to unravel while filming a supernatural horror film in which he plays a priest and an exorcist. His ex-daughter (Ryan Simpkins) wonders if he’s falling back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play, and turns to the film’s Jesuit priest advisor (David Hyde Pierce) for guidance. ugly. This film within a film, starring Adam Goldberg as the filmmaker, was written by Miller and MA Fortin.
See Review of deadlines. It’s personal: the director’s father, actor Jason Miller, played the hapless Father Karras in William Friedkin’s 1973. The Exorcist.
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