Story Ave starring Luis Guzman grossed $9.85k in a limited opening at one theater, Quad Cinema, with multiple sold-out shows. The first feature from director Aristotle Torres, which won for Best Cinematography at SXSW (see Deadline review) expands to Chicago and the Bronx next week, followed by LA and additional markets October 13.
Guzman plays a no-nonsense subway operator who becomes an unlikely mentor to a teenager (Asante Blackk) caught up in the dangerous world of Bronx graffiti gangs. Written by Torres and Bonsu Thompson. Produced by Jamie Foxx.
In an overall market “that’s not exactly easy,” Story Ave pulled in a diverse crowd, said Kino’s director of theatrical distribution, Maxwell Wolkin. “You have to get creative, and find an angle, and find things that hit. And it’s not necessarily always what you expect, but this film is audience friendly, it’s got a real voice, it’s connecting with people. We saw it at South by Southwest and thought we had something.”
He said big rainstorms Friday in the New York metro area didn’t hit grosses that night. The Quad stayed open. Others including Alamo Drafthouse and AMC shuttered theaters for a chunk of the day. “We were lucky,” he said, with sellout shows Friday night.
Kino Lorber has Scrapper and Radical Wolfe still in theaters.
Uptown from the Quad, crowds packed Lincoln Center theaters for the New York Film Festival, which started Friday.
In a big expansion, A24’s re-release of Stop Making Sense grossed over $1 million on 786 screens. The remastered 1984 Talking Heads concert film is set to top a $3 million cume.
It was a relatively quiet weekend for new specialty openings: Sony Pictures Classics Tribeca Festival- premiering documentary Carlos, on the life and career of legendary musician Carlos Santana, took in an estimated $367k on 541 screens.
The Kill Room from Shout! Studios grossed $87k on 355 screens.
Area 23a Films opened Common Ground in four locations to a projected weekend gross of $37k for a PTA of $9,250, according to Comscore.The film directed by Josh & Rebecca Tickell, launched out of the Tribeca Film Festival with the Human/Nature Award.
And Fathom’s The Blind $4.98 million on a wider 1,715 screens, no. 5 on the top ten.
Holdovers: Neon’s It Lives Inside grossed an estimated $767.5k in week 2 on 1,827 screens, for a cume of $4.27 million.
Amerikatsi from Variance Films, Armenia’s submission for Best International Feature, grossed an estimated $37,589 on 26 screens in its fourth weekend a cume of $345,353.
MGM and Emma Seligman’s Bottoms $241,386 on 207 screens for a current estimated cume of $11.6 million.