‘The Fabelmans’ Earns Solid $40,000 Average at Specialty Box Office

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.

UPDATED, 8:16 AM: Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans will receive the Vanguard Award at the 2023 Palm Springs Film Festival’s gala in January.

Before Disney’s 20th Century Studios’ Avatar: The Way of Water floods the box office with a potential $200M opening on Dec.16, Universal might have a surprise this weekend in the 87North holiday action movie Violent Night, starring David Harbour. Universal is hoping for $10M, maybe $12M on the Tommy Wirkola-directed movie for a second place take. However, rivals are truly excited by it, thinking it could do much more.

EXCLUSIVE: WME has signed The Fabelmans breakout Chloe East, in a competitive situation.

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.

Over the 5-day Thanksgiving stretch, Netflix’s one week sneak preview of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery buried all new and old major studio adult counterprogramming with an estimated $13.3M over 5-days for what is projected to be a $15M first week by Tuesday.

Laura Poitras’ Venice Golden Lion-winner  All The Beauty And The Bloodshed opens in three theaters today, testing a crowded specialty market at the IFC Center, Lincoln Center & BAM in NYC. It adds LA and San Francisco (AMC Sunset 5 & AMC Kabuki) Dec. 2.

It’s starting to sink in that Harrison Ford is hanging up his whip with “Indiana Jones 5.” The 80-year-old actor ends his tenure as the beloved tomb raider and part-time archaeology professor next summer. The fifth installment is directed by James Mangold (“Ford Vs.

Few directors have reached the upper echelon in which names like Steven Spielberg reside, and “The Fabelmans” gives viewers insight into how the great movie-making mind came to be. Spielberg’s origin story springs off the page from a script co-written by the director and Tony Kushner, the “Angels in America” playwright and a frequent collaborator of Spielberg’s.

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.

Call it a holiday tradition as common as sweet potatoes on the Thanksgiving table, but Disney is going to rule the five-day holiday stretch again after wins in 2016 (Moana), 2017 (Coco), 2018 (Ralph Breaks the Internet), 2019 (Frozen 2) and last year (Encanto), as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever‘s third weekend looks to do $40M over Wednesday-Sunday and Disney Animation’s Strange World hopes to squeeze out $30M+. All of this occurs as Bob Iger is re-installed as the CEO of Disney and the studio’s distribution czar Kareem Daniel exits.

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.

“Bones and All” sees Guadagnino reunite with his “Call Me By Your Name” star Timothee Chalamet, who stars alongside newcomer Taylor Russell as a pair of cannibals who fall in love and embark on a tragic road trip across America. The film won Best Director and Best Newcomer honors at Venice and has received praise from critics with an 86% Rotten Tomatoes score, though its likely to remain a niche title as one would expect for a film with such a grisly taboo topic.

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.

There was something particularly nerve-racking about playing a young Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans, the director’s semi-autobiographical movie base on his own family and upbringing. For starters, star Gabriel LaBelle said during an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles awards-season event that he never actually sat down with the director to get the 411 on what Spielberg was like as a young kid.

At just 19 years of age (reportedly), Gabriel LaBelle is already at the pinacle of Hollywood cinema. The relatively unknown Canadian actor is turning heads as Sammy Fableman, a fictional version of the legendary director Steven Spielberg in the new period drama “The Fabelmans.” A movie that is arguably the frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar and will put LaBelle under a massive global spotlight in the weeks and months to come.

The Fabelmans grossed an estimated $160k this weekend at four theaters in NY and LA. That’s a $40K per screen average, on par with recent strong (for post-Covid) specialty openings like The Banshees Of Inisherin (at $45k PSA) and Tár (also $40k), both on four screens too, reflecting a definite pickup in the specialty space. Spielberg’s written, directed and produced semi-autobiographical tale debuted into one of the biggest openings of the year with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Universal Pictures is giving Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans a platform release starting with four locations in NYC (Lincoln Square, Union Square) and LA (The Grove, Century City) with a robust media campaign aimed at cinephiles, but also capitalizing on the broad appeal of a Spielberg production, testament to unusual pedigree of the semiautobiographical film.