‘Till,’ ‘Decision to Leave’ Lead Slow Weekend Indie Box Office

Till stars Danielle Deadwyler and John Douglas Thompson and director Chinonye Chukwu kicked off Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York event with a discussion about the atmosphere they sought to cultivate on the film’s set.

“Till” is sixth on the box office charts after expanding to 2,058 theaters, grossing just $2.8 million for a per-theater average of $1,366 and a running total of $3.6 million. The good news for Chinonye Chukwu’s true-story drama about the murder of Emmett Till is that critical and audience praise has been overwhelming, with a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score and an A+ on CinemaScore.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Homecoming, a patriotic rescue movie, dominated the mainland China box office for the third successive weekend. Overall numbers remained anemic in the first full week after the National Day holiday period, sometimes referred to as a ‘Golden Week’. “Homecoming” garnered $12.1 million (RMB85.6 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy and research firm Artisan Gateway. That gave the film a 64% share of the nationwide weekend aggregate. Accordingly, it was far ahead of second-placed film “Give Me Five,” which released on Sept. 9, 2022. “Give Me Five” earned just $1.9 million over the weekend, for a six-week cumulative of $63.8 million.

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.

The Halloween Ends numbers are coming in, and the studio might not be so pleased.

Specialty film rollouts continues to accelerate with Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave and A24’s Stars At Noon joining releases from previous weeks to populate theaters as awards season gathers steam.  

Independent projections predicted a $50 million opening weekend for the Universal and Blumhouse picture, on par with that of “Halloween Kills.” The 2021 sequel scored $4.9 million at its Thursday box office debut. In 2018, “Halloween” made $7.7 million on its first night and went on to earn an eye-popping $77.5 million from its opening weekend – the second highest of any rated-R horror movie at the time.Set four years after the events of “Halloween Kills,” “Halloween Ends” presents the last showdown between Laurie Strode (Curtis) and longtime nemesis Michael Myers.

Danielle Deadwyler is stepping out for a special screening of her new movie.

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.

Focus Features’Tár opened in limited release to strong results with $160,000 at four locations in New York and Los Angles for a $40,000 per theater average, one of the best PTAs since Covid and not bad for a 2-hour and 38-minute arthouse film pre-pandemic.

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.

“Smile” has become the latest original horror film, joining Universal/Blumhouse’s “The Black Phone” and 20th Century’s “Barbarian” to find low budget success thanks to strong word-of-mouth among horror fans. Against a production budget of $17 million, “Smile” now has a 10-day domestic total of $50 million, creating an intriguing match-up next weekend as the theatrically exclusive film goes up against a franchise horror film, Universal/Blumhouse’s “Halloween Ends,” which has a much higher profile but will also be released day-and-date on Peacock this Friday.

Whoopi Goldberg has a note of her own for one reviewer of her new film Till.

Broadway held fairly steady at the box office last week, with recent arrivals Leopoldstadt and The Piano Lesson leading the pack of fall newcomers with grosses of $758,988 and $704,051, respectively.

The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till is one of the lesser-known turning points in U.S. history; but the details of his case, along with the pictures of his disfigured body, haunted the nation’s consciousness back in 1955.

Whoopi Goldberg is opening up about her role in the upcoming movie Till and she’s also responding to a critic who claimed she was wearing a fat suit in the film.