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. “We felt like this movie harkened back to pre-COVID releases, where it demanded to have that kind of attention of New York and Los Angeles openings,” says Lisa Bunnell, the president of distribution at Focus Features, which is releasing “Tár.” She adds, “Not every speciality movie makes sense to do in this way.
All of us are in this test mode.” Independent film distributors have been in the so-called “test mode” for quite a while now.
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