After a better-than-expected opening weekend in theaters, box office for Amazon's "Melania" fell 67%, to $2.37 million, in its second weekend. The documentary about First Melania Trump has grossed a total of $13.5 million so far (almost all of that in the United States), which means it's extremely unlikely the film - which Amazon spent $40 million to acquire and $35 million to market - will break even in theaters.
Each year, most films leave the festival without a distributor in place, and we've only seen a handful of sales so far despite Netflix, Neon, Searchlight, Focus, A24, and more all on the ground. Plus, newcomer distribution groups like Row K and Warners' independent label also landed in Utah to make an impression. Alas, many movies still need a home, and below, IndieWire rounds up the ones we think distributors will click with - some more intrepid than others, but all worthy of a hopefully big-screen landing place.
It's not hard to imagine why the project would attract so much attention, given the names attached to it. Starring and directed by Wilde, comes from a script written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and also stars Seth Rogen, Ed Norton, Penelope Cruz. The sexual rom-com is a remake of the Spanish language film Sentimental , and sees Rogen and Wilde play a married couple on the rocks who host a dinner party with a communicative and passionate couple portrayed by Norton and Cruz.
Considering Tarantino's penchant for championing Asian cinema and his taste for stylized hyper-violence, the pick certainly didn't come out of nowhere. But for many of those watching him chat about his favorites, the movie was as much of a myth as an actual product. Battle Royale hadn't been officially released on home video in the United States, so if you'd missed its few theatrical showings, you were left scrabbling for a bootleg version
Shortly, the Oscar fate of hundreds of feature and short documentary hopefuls will be decided during what is known as "preliminary voting" (December 8-12), when the 736 documentary branch members give each film they've seen a numbered score. This will yield the shortlist of 15, from which they will rank those films on a preferential ballot. The shortlist announcement will come on December 16. The whole Academy will vote on the final five. But only those who have seen all five can vote.
When "No Other Land" won the Oscar for best documentary this year, the victory should have ensured worldwide release. Instead, the film about the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank failed to secure a US distributor. The filmmakers, a collective of Israeli and Palestinian activists, eventually self-released. The US screenings faced protests and political pushback, but the movie played to sold-out houses and earned more than $2 million at the box office.
It's been a while since Kodak launched a new film, and even longer since it actually distributed its own. But the company caught people by surprise yesterday when it announced two new film products - Kodacolor 100 and Kodacolor 200. Just as important, it announced that it would be distributing them itself, rather than going through Kodak Alaris, which has handled distribution since the company split following bankruptcy proceedings in 2012.
