Poor Things Just Cracked The Box Office Top 10 In A Remarkable Way
Though director Yorgos Lanthimos has built up his own mini-fandom of cinephiles who love bizarre, darkly comic films, he didn't really hit it big at the box office until 2018's "The Favourite." Strong overseas performance coupled with Oscars buzz (it was nominated in 10 categories, though the only win went to lead actress Olivia Colman) made "The Favourite" a commercial hit as well as a critical darling.
That success story that scored Lanthimos a bigger budget for his new movie, "Poor Things." The period science fiction story stars Emma Stone as Bella, the reanimated corpse of a pregnant woman who was brought back to life with the brain of the baby she was pregnant with, creating an infant mind in an adult's body. It's certainly a bizarre premise, courtesy of the novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray, but "Poor Things" is off to quite an astonishing start at the box office. Like "The Favourite," it debuted in just a handful of theaters and is gradually expanding to more locations. Its second weekend at the domestic box office saw "Poor Things" expand to 82 theaters nationwide, grossing $1.3 million and landing the No. 9 spot in the weekend's box office top 10.
Cracking the top 10 despite showing in only 82 theaters is pretty incredible. "Poor Things" also had the highest per-theater average of any movie in the top 10 ($15,548). Its opening weekend stats from last week were also very impressive: Showing in just nine theaters, it grossed $661k with a per-theater average of $73,470.
How far could Poor Things go at the box office?
Looking back at "The Favourite," Lanthimos' last film never cracked the top 10 at the domestic box office during its run. Yet it had an even more impressive per-theater average, grossing $422,410 from just four theaters on its opening weekend, and over $1 million from just 34 theaters in its second weekend. Had it not been released amid a crowded Thanksgiving slate, it could have easily been top 10 material. Overall, "The Favourite" grossed $34.3 million at the domestic box office by the end of its run, and $95.9 million worldwide. If "Poor Things" performs similarly then, even with a larger budget of $35 million, it should break even and turn a modest profit.
"Poor Things" is still untested overseas, which is where "The Favourite" made two-thirds of its worldwide total. That film was a particularly big hit in the United Kingdom, since the story was about Britain's 18th-century monarch Queen Anne and it starred two of the UK's favorite daughters: Olivia Colman and Rachel Weisz. Its ticket sales in the land of tea and crumpets amounted to $21.8 million, more than a fifth of the global total.
Aside from being able to boast "from the director of 'The Favourite'" in marketing, "Poor Things" also has Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo adding to the star power, and a handful of Oscar nominations could help give it good strong legs. It already has a stellar score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, as of this writing. We'll know more about its fate over when the international rollout begins in January.
/Film's Ben Pearson and Ryan Scott spoke more about this on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to here:
They also touched on the opening weekend performance of "Wonka," and look ahead to the prospects for this week's "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom."
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