Strong Opening Weeks Fill Seats For ‘Kimberly Akimbo’, Mike Birbiglia – Broadway Box Office

Akin to domestic, it was a rather sleepy weekend at the international box office. Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever again won the frame, with $20.2M from 50 overseas markets for an offshore total of $339.3M and a global tally of $733M through Sunday.

Focus Features’ Spoiler Alert opened on six screens (in NY, LA, San Francisco) to an estimated $85k, or $14k per theater, in a crowded arthouse market. Strong exit polls and word of mouth – 94% in the top two boxes – could help built out this movie, which will likely be more audience-focused than awards-buzz driven.

Universal and 87North’s action horror pic Violent Night is off to a healthy start with $1.1M previews last night. Hopefully this movie will give the weekend box office a pulse and overperform which is typically a slow period post Thanksgiving, and even worse given the fact that the marketplace is still in rebuild.

Elon Musk’s back may be against the wall as Twitter’s new owner, but he has plenty of friends in high places, especially in the tech sector.

Even with one fewer show on the Broadway boards, and overall attendance at the 33 productions down a smidge from the previous week, Broadway box office was up 22% during Thanksgiving week, scoring a plump $37,475,773 due to plumper holiday ticket prices.

Sideshow/Janus Films EO held well in week two, grossing $23,217 for the five-day holiday frame ($11,609 per screen) and $16,900 for the three-day weekend ($8,450 per screen). The new cume is $50.7k in a crowded arthouse market, a strong showing for the film starring a melancholic gray donkey. It expands to LA next week opening at Laemmle Royal, Alamo Drafthouse DTLA, Los Feliz 3, and Santa Barbara’s Riviera Theater at SBIFF. Director Jerzy Skolimowski will be on hand for Q&As all weekend.

The long awaited James Cameron sequel to the highest grossing movie of all-time hit tracking this morning with a projected opening of at least $150M. Tracking has it higher near $175M, but rivals are bullish at $200M.

Luca Guadagnino’s Timothée Chalamet-starring, edgy cannibal road trip romance Bones And All pulled in young demos (79% in the 18-34 rage) and women (54%-46% female) for an opening weekend gross of $120k, or $23.9k per screen average in five theaters. That’s respectable and in line with distributor UAR expectations although below recent debuts including Banshees of Inisherin and Tár last month and The Fabelmans last week, where PSAs all cracked $40k.

Refresh for latest…: In its sophomore frame, Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever sent its worldwide cume well past the $500M mark, with an estimated $546.3M through Sunday.  The split is $288M domestic and $258.3M from the international box office.

With his latest solo show The Old Man & the Pool, Mike Birbiglia cements his reigning position as Broadway’s greatest comic storyteller – stand-up comic just doesn’t quite fit him – and, yes, the competition for the title isn’t example plentiful, but if it was, Birbiglia could hold his own. He’s that good, and so is his latest accomplishment.

Kimberly Akimbo, one of the unlikeliest, most exhilarating and unfailingly moving musicals to hit New York in years, opens on Broadway tonight having lost none of its immense charm since its Off Broadway debut lsat year swept just about every critics award there was to be swept.

The Sundance Institute has added three newly appointed members to the Board of Trustees. Lulu Wang (director of “The Farewell”), Patrick Gaspard (current CEO for the Center for American Progress) and Shripriya Mahesh (a founding partner at Spero Ventures) have joined the business, cultural and philanthropic leaders who steer the entire organization and also act in an advisory capacity.

Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever got out to a $10.1M start in  17 international box office markets on Wednesday. This is ahead of continued offshore rollout through Friday and the sequel’s domestic debut on Friday (domestic previews start Thursday). 

Gabriel Byrne’s Broadway solo show Walking With Ghosts will play its final performance on Sunday, November 20, a week shy of a month after its Oct. 27 opening at the Music Box Theatre.

Two of the fall Broadway season’s buzzy new musicals – A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical and Some Like It Hot – began previews last week, both doing solid business in their first, partial weeks.

Despite the presence of New Line’s Black Adam and Universal’s franchise title Halloween Ends at the October box office, the drought we’ve been weathering since the second frame of August with U.S./Canada weekend ticket sales averaging $58M has been stinging to say the least.