The Wackness Smokes the Box Office in Week 1, Rolls On

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 8, 2008

Perhaps we were wrong about Sony Pictures Classics back in January when we deep-fried them for their acquisition of the Sundance Audience Award winning film The Wackness. At that point, we were very worried that they would be ill-equiped to market such a film, and having been one of the reviewers who initially gooed over the damn thing, I felt very protective of it.

As it turns out, SPC has done just fine with director Jonathan Levine’s film up to this point. In fact, The Wackness earned over $23,000 per theater this past weekend in 6 theaters. The total weekend gross may have only been $138,000, but that isn’t bad considering that it has only opened in NYC and Los Angeles. As well, the $23,066 per theater average was the highest of any release last weekend, toping Hancock by almost $8,000 per theater. Not bad for a little indie film that was dubbed early on as a “hard sell” because of its drug-infused content.

The Wackness is set to roll out into another seven markets this weekend, opening in San Francisco, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston, San Diego, Chicago and Seattle on July 11. It will then add four more markets on July 18th and finally see its major release in another 30+ markets on July 25th. For a full listing of markets where it will be playing in July, click here.

Oh yeah, and once you are done seeing The Dark Knight later this month, I would highly recommend that you give The Wackness a shot.

Box office statistics courtesy of Box Office Mojo

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