‘Tár’, ‘Triangle Of Sadness’ A Double Shot Of Optimism For Arthouse Fare – Specialty Box Office

Universal/Working Title’s Ticket to Paradise has winged past the $100M mark globally. With Tuesday’s grosses included, the Julia Roberts/George Clooney romcom’s split is $20.6M domestic and $81.9M from the international box office for a worldwide total of $102.5M so far.

Searchlight Pictures’ The Banshees Of Inisherin opened to an estimated $181,000 and a raring per screen average of $45,250, beating Tár’s impressive $40,000. Both opened in four locations and now rank no. 2 and no. 3 for an indie per-theater gross this year after A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. That film’s in a class of its own with an April opening PTA of over $50k on many more screens and a $100 million+ worldwide grosses. But Banshees is the latest in a wave of strong limited openings this month from Decision To Leave to Triangle of Sadness to Aftersun to Till making the case for an arthouse revival. Case made.

Broadway box office held steady at $28,621,480 last week as a slate of new productions began or continued previews (Almost Famous and Kimberly Akimbo filled more than 90% of their seats), MJ and Leopoldstadt set house records and The Phantom of the Opera was once again standing room only as the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical heads toward its Feb. 18 closing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief While the Busan International Film Festival was busily hailing a return to normality the slump at South Korea’s commercial box office deepened dramatically over the most recent weekend. Cinemagoing nationwide was worth only $4.20 million between Friday and Sunday, the lowest weekend total since April and a time before Korean cinemas shed their COVID restrictions. The weekend’s top film “Life Is Beautiful” managed the lowest first place score of any film this year, with a weekend haul of just $777,000, according to data from Kobiz, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

Chinonye Chukwu’s Till got off to a solid start at the specialized box office, grossing over $15k per theater from 16 locations in five markets for an estimated weekend gross of $240.9k, possibly more depending on how Sunday plays out.

“Halloween Ends” is only just beginning.The slasher film cut its way to first place at the box office on Friday, earning more than $20 million in theaters.The sequel to last year’s “Halloween Kills” is predicted to take in $43.4 million on its opening weekend, according to Variety.“Smile” was bumped from the top spot this week, moving down a notch to second, after spending two weeks at number one.The flick surpassed earnings of $100 million at the global box office in less than two weeks, as per Collider.The live-action/CGI musical comedy “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” swam down to third place, clawing in $2 million. The movie adaption of the popular children’s book series enjoyed a $11.5 million domestic debut on its opening weekend, according to Deadline.“The Woman King” held up her crown, remaining in fourth, with a $1 million-dollar take.

A middle school teacher in Alabama spends his free time as a drag queen, and recently made sexually driven comments at a Drag Queen Story Time that was geared toward kids. James Miller, a teacher at Mountain Gap Middle School in Huntsville, Alabama, operates the Facebook page "Madge D. Ivine (Miss Majesty Divine)," where he frequently posts pictures of himself attending drag events such as Drag Queen Story Time.

Naman Ramachandran An influential panel of buyers from Asia and Europe identified multiple problems in the current, depressed post-pandemic box office landscape for arthouse films and attempted to find solutions at a Platform Busan panel on Monday. The panel included Laure Parleani of Totem Films (France), Kim Heaok of Hark & Company (Japan), Beril Heral of Filmarti (Turkey) and June Lee from Korean streamer Watcha. The panel was moderated by Variety Asia editor Patrick Frater. Parleani mentioned that France has had its worst box office September in 42 years, with only Rebecca Zlotowski’s Venice title “Other People’s Children” and Alice Winocour’s Cannes title “Revoir Paris,” both starring Virginie Efira, bringing some cheer amongst local fare.

Naman Ramachandran After 22 weeks in cinemas across Ireland and the U.K., writer-director Colm Bairéad’s “An Cailín Ciúin” (“The Quiet Girl”) has crossed €1 million ($971,000) at the box office. The film is Ireland’s entry in the Oscars’ international feature category. Based on Irish author Claire Keegan’s story “Foster,” the coming-of-age film, set in rural Ireland in 1981, follows Cáit (Catherine Clinch) as she is sent from her overcrowded, dysfunctional household to live with distant relatives for the summer. It has been an unstoppable force on the festival and awards circuit, winning top prizes at the Berlin, Dublin and Taipei film festivals and sweeping the Irish Film and Television Awards. Produced by Cleona Ní Chrualaoi for Inscéal, the film is distributed by Break Out Pictures and Curzon.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter After two years of upheaval and unfamiliarity at the box office, there’s something refreshingly familiar about the theatrical release of “Tár.” The acclaimed movie, directed by Todd Fields and starring Cate Blanchett as a world-famous conductor embroiled in a controversy of her own making, generated a stellar $160,000 from four theaters (two in New York City and two in Los Angeles) over the weekend, averaging a mighty $40,000 per location. Next weekend, it’s expanding its theater count (ever so slightly), to 30 new venues in 10 domestic markets. That kind of steady and deliberately paced rollout, one that relies almost entirely on positive word-of-mouth, is about as traditional as it gets for an arthouse film. Yet for most of the pandemic, it was rendered obsolete.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Comedy action film “Confidential Assignment 2: International” claimed its fifth successive weekend victory at the South Korean box office as only U.S. horror film “Smile” was able to break into the top five.The CJ Entertainment-distributed “Confidential Assignment 2” managed $1.64 million over the Friday to Sunday period, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). That represented a 27% share of the market. “Confidential Assignment 2” recorded a 27% weekend on weekend decline. That pushed its cumulative total to $47 million, earned form $6.52 million ticket sales since release on Set. 7, 2022.

After a pandemic recovery year in which Focus has started many of its releases with larger theater counts, “Tár” is starting with a return to the traditional four-screen launch in New York and Los Angeles, earning $160,000 for a per-theater average of $40,000. With the LA theaters that first got platform releases, the Arclight Hollywood and Landmark Pico, both now closed, Focus has turned to the AMC locations in Century City and the Grove on Fairfax to release “Tár,” while releasing it at the Angelika and AMC Lincoln Square in New York.

Today Focus Features opens Tár, the strikingly original return of Todd Field, in four locations in NY and LA. The film premiered at Venice winning star Cate Blanchett Best Actress as musician and conductor Lydia Tár. Early this week, it seemed to mesmerize a sold-out Allice Tully Hall at the New York Film Festival.

Bohemian Rhapsody” about a celebrated maestro we would all be more familiar with if we had the time and money to regularly attend the Berliner Philharmoniker and skim Der Spiegel. Nein! She’s fake.Running time: 158 minutes.

EXCLUSIVE: One of the most honored documentaries of the year is heading to the very big screen.

French cinema professionals from across the country’s independent production, distribution and exhibition chain flocked to an emergency general convention in Paris this week to raise the alarm over the future of their industry.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Grappling with free-falling theatrical admissions and misplaced blame by exhibitors on so-called “auteur” movies, the leading lights of the French film industry sounded the alarm about the state of the country’s cinema sector during a dramatic and emotional conference. The jam-packed event on Thursday, called Appel aux Etats Generaux (Call for General Assemblies), was organized by some of France’s most established producers including Saïd Ben Saïd, Judith Lou Levy and Philippe Carcassone, who work frequently with directors Paul Verhoven, Mati Diop and Florian Zeller, respectively. The conference was held at the Institut du Monde Arabe, a cultural venue headed by Jack Lang, who served as minister of culture throughout the 1980s. More than 400 people attended the event, including members of the independent distributors guild (DIRE) and the directors guild SRF, the governing body of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.

Ethan Shanfeld Cate Blanchett stunned audiences on Monday night at the New York Film Festival with her commanding performance as Lydia Tár — a fictional celebrity composer who experiences a grand fall from grace after her past comes back to haunt her. When writer-director Todd Fields premiered “Tár” last month at the Venice Film Festival, the film generated instant Oscar buzz and received a six-minute standing ovation. Now, it’s gearing up for a limited release in select theaters later this week. On the red carpet at the North American premiere of “Tár,” Blanchett spoke with Variety about the parallels between Lydia Tár’s ferocious musical ambitions and her own illustrious acting career.

Cate Blanchett shows off the statement sleeves of her black gown at the premiere of TÁR during the 2022 New York Film Festival held at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on Monday (October 3) in New York City.