While George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing bombed at the box office in US, audiences in the director’s native country have proved a little more receptive.
Shot in Sydney, the romance fantasy is Miller’s first film since Mad Max: Fury Road. Tilda Swinton stars as a scholar who encounters a Djinn, played by Idris Alba, who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.
Premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the film has received reviews that for the most part, err on the positive.
However, when the romance fantasy debuted in North America the weekend of starting September 1, it made a paltry $US2.87 million from 2,436 locations. That was blamed by pundits on minimal promotion by distributor MGM and too wide a release strategy, with the argument a platform release would have served it better.
Here in Australia, Three Thousand Years of Longing opened last weekend to $422,941 for Roadshow from 246 screens, which – while not setting the world on fire – is, pro-rata, a much better result.
That said, it still wasn’t enough to outpace the weekend’s only other major release of note, Studiocanal’s Orphan: First Kill. The horror prequel, which sees Isabelle Fuhrman reprise her role from the 2009 original, collected $735,824 from 205 screens. Not adjusting for inflation, that’s more than double the opening weekend of first film, which started at $363,765 (it finished just short of $1 million).
Village Cinemas national programming manager Geoff Chard puts Three Thousand Years of Longing‘s better performance in Australia down to a wider release footprint, combined with Miller being Australian.
“The overall opening of $420k though was under our expectations, but is in line with the current market performance,” he says.
Chard says Orphan: First Kill was the surprise of the weekend, also performing significantly ahead of the US pro-rata, predicting: “The film will at least double the box office result of the first film released back in 2009.”
After a sell-out premiere with Miller in attendance, Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace GM Alex Temesvari had hoped for more from Three Thousand Years of Longing, but counters: “Word of mouth on the film appears to be very good so hopefully we’ll see strong holds across the coming weeks.”
Other exhibitors had more success, with the phantasmagorical romance helping to propel Cinema Nova into the top 10 screens nationally; it was top-grossing Victorian site for the film.
Majestic Cinemas CEO Kieren Dell tells IF the film generally did well at the circuit’s more upmarket sites. “The Australian connection did seem to translate to a better result than the US,” he says.
Each of the last three weekends have set new records for the slowest this year, with Numero figures putting the top 20 titles at $5.7 million, down 16 per cent on the previous.
In a sign of just how slow the box office is at the moment – a dry spell that will continue until mid-September – no film earned over $1 million over the weekend. Sony’s Bullet Train was no. 1 for the fifth weekend in a row, while Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick actually bolstered its numbers and landed in second position, enjoying continued repeat viewing as it enters 15 weeks in release.
Further than that, Sony’s summer mega hit Spider-Man: No Way Home – in re-release with an extra 10 minutes of footage – managed to enter the top five with $334,680; a result that takes it to $81.5 million overall.
As Dell puts it: “A number of sites had Top Gun Maverick, Bullet Train and Good Luck to You Leo Grande at the top of the box office, showing that holdovers are continuing to prop up what is a sick box office at the moment.”
Exhibitors are holding on until September 15, which will see the release of DC’s League of Super Pets, Ticket to Paradise, Moonage Daydream and Bodies Bodies Bodies.
Bullet Train‘s lack of real competition saw its weekend receipts dip only 10 per cent to $883,414, moving to $10.2 million. Top Gun: Maverick was actually up 30 per cent on the previous with $819,487, meaning it has now crossed the $90 million mark.
Reset Collective/Roadshow’s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, directed by Sophie Hyde, is also holding well, dropping only 31 per in its third frame to $314,513, advancing to $2.3 million.
The King seems to refuses to leave the building, with Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis only dropping 19 per cent in its 11th weekend to $289,555. The Warner Bros. film is now at $32.7 million, and ranks as the fourth highest grossing Australian title of all time (not adjusting for inflation), behind Crocodile Dundee, Luhrmann’s fellow film Australia and Babe.
Sony’s Where The Crawdads Sing, in its seventh frame, earned $272,527 to move to $10.7 million, with Universal’s Nope right behind with a fourth weekend result of $262,460, moving to $4.4 million.
Rounding out the top 10 was another Idris Alba-starrer, Universal’s Beast, which mustered a sophomore result of just $246,486, with gross $891,565.
Besides Three Thousand Years of Longing and Elvis, the best performing Australian film of the weekend was documentary The Lost City of Melbourne, which looks back at the city’s demolished Victorian architecture. It earned $23,043 from just eight screens for Gusto Films; an impressive average of $2,800. Directed by Gus Berger, the film recently debuted at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
Body image documentary Embrace Kids, released much wider by Transmission Films on 80 screens, didn’t have the same luck, mustering just $20,824 – an average of $231 per session. With previews, it’s on $36,100.
Bosch & Rockit, now three weekends in, has pocketed $220,528 for Madman, while Aus-UK co-pro Falling for Figaro is on $1.1 million.
Del Kathryn Barton’s feature debut Blaze has struggled despite good reviews, on just $29,058 after two weekends via Bonsai.