It was another big week for the indie box office, as Fox Searchlight’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” opened to $320,000 from its four-screen opening in Los Angeles and New York.
That gives Martin McDonagh’s black dramedy the third highest per screen average of 2017 with $80,000, joining A24’s “Lady Bird” and Amazon/Lionsgate’s “The Big Sick” in the top 3. The film stars Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Lucas Hedges, Peter Dinklage and John Hawkes, and with a 95 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating, it is expected to be an Oscar contender. It will expand to 12 cities next week and to approximately 400 screens nationwide on Thanksgiving weekend.
As for “Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut continues to blow away the box office. After making $400,000 from just four screens last week, it expanded to 37 screens this weekend and made a whopping $1.25 million for a $33,766 PSA. A24 has been performing well over the past few weeks, as “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” reached $1.5 million in its fourth weekend while “The Florida Project” grew to $3.8 million in its sixth weekend.
Also opening on a single screen this week is The Orchard’s “Thelma.” While The Orchard was in the headlines this week for all the wrong reasons as it dropped Louis C.K.’s “I Love You, Daddy” in the wake of The New York Times report on his sexual misconduct, “Thelma” had a strong performance grossing $12,357. Selected as Norway’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, Joachim Trier’s “Thelma” is a horror film that follows a titular student who develops strange powers after moving to Oslo and falling in love with a girl. The film has an 88 percent RT score.
Elsewhere, Electric Entertainment’s “LBJ” grew to $2 million after making $509,000 from 608 screens, while Good Deed’s “Loving Vincent” will pass the $4 million mark this coming week after making $515,140 from 212 screens.