Alamo Drafthouse Completes Sale: Out Of Bankruptcy And Opening Five New Theaters As Box Office Revives

Specialty box office is ready for liftoff.

Since the release of Paramount’s “A Quiet Place — Part II” and Disney’s “Cruella” at the end of May, overall numbers have dropped 14-18% each weekend as only one June release — Warner Bros.’ “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” — has posted an opening weekend of over $20 million. This weekend, overall grosses fell 18% to an estimated $47 million, leaving theaters to wait for the release of “F9” next weekend to get business going again.

The Sparks Brothers, a documentary about a cult band by a brand-name director in Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead) hits big screens this weekend, a felicitous one as New York and LA drop most capacity restrictions in theaters. The film about musician brothers Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks premiered at Sundance this year, notching a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes — all of which could hopefully give the arthouse market some long-term traction through the summer

The sequel to the 2017 film starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson will open in 2,940 theaters on Wednesday and expand to 3,300 theaters on Friday.

Third-party streaming viewership stat org Samba TV reports this morning that 693k U.S. households watched In the Heights on HBO Max in their live+3-day window. The news comes in the wake of the Warner Bros. feature musical losing the No. 1 spot at the weekend B.O. to the third session of Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II, $11.5M to $12M.

Hidden Empire Film Group’s comedy/horror romp The House Next Door: Meet the Blacks 2 scared up a $1.064M opening weekend (per screen average of $2,533) with writer-director Deon Taylor and his team huddling right now over where and how much to expand the run — but expand it they will. Taylor’s thrilled with the $$ although he and others in the indie space acknowledged Sunday that ongoing distancing restrictions in key New York and LA is a major bummer.

Refresh for latest…: With no major new releases, this was a strong holdover weekend at the international box office, led by last week’s champ, New Line/Warner Bros’ The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Disney’s Cruella and Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter“In the Heights,” the acclaimed adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show, didn’t hit all the right notes in its box office debut.The Warner Bros. movie generated a wane $11.4 million from 3,456 U.S.

The John Krasinski horror film hit the big milestone on its third Friday in theaters, grossing $3.7 million from 3,515 screens as industry estimates peg the film for a No. 2 finish this weekend with $11.4 million, which would give it a domestic total of $108 million.

SATURDAY UPDATE: Refresh for updates While it appeared that the summer box office was dusting itself off from the pandemic over the last two weeks, both newcomers Warner Bros. highly anticipated Jon M. Chu directed Lin-Manuel Miranda musical In the Heights and Sony’s Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway are currently filing less than spectacular results respectively with a No. 1 rank of $5M Friday, $13M 3-day and No. 4 place of $4M Friday, and $10.2M 30-day.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter“In the Heights,” the big-screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical, is poised to light up the U.S. box office.Debuting this weekend in 3,400 U.S.

Christopher Vourlias The coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on cinema chains across the globe, with protracted lockdowns, limited seating capacity, and delayed releases of Hollywood blockbusters sending the likes of Alamo Drafthouse into—and out of—bankruptcy and pushing giants like Cineworld and AMC to the brink.Yet for Russia’s Karo Cinemas, the past year has hardly slowed pre-pandemic growth; at the rapidly expanding cinema chain, which is among the country’s largest, it’s currently full

“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” took the top spot for the week with a $24 million haul, ousting last week’s leader “A Quiet Place Part II,” which took in $20 million this week and $88.6 million over two weeks, according to Comscore.Disney’s “Cruella” was third with $11.2 million domestically and “Spirit Untamed” took in $6.2 million for the fourth spot in its opening weekend.

Rebecca Davis editorDisney’s “Cruella” strut into China on Sunday with a $1.78 million opening day, coming in sixth in a slow weekend behind reigning box office champ “F9,” according to data from Maoyan.Day one China figures for “Cruella” were less than a fourth of the $7.7 million the film grossed on its May 28 opening day in North America, where it premiered in theaters and on Disney Plus via a $30 fee.

This total is slightly above the series-low opening for the eight-film “Conjuring” franchise, which was $20 million for the 2019 spinoff “Annabelle Comes Home.” Produced on a $39 million budget, the horror film is on its way to turning a solid profit for Warner Bros.

Exhibition ruled the stock market today after a long holiday weekend saw Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II crush it, earning $57 million over four days. That’s not far from the $60 million that the John Krasinski-directed sequel was anticipated to do in its 3-day opening pre-pandemic, according to my colleague Anthony D’Alessandro.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterRejoice, cinema lovers. Alamo Drafthouse, the theater chain that’s popular for its no-nonsense approach to moviegoing, has emerged from Chapter 11.The bankruptcy filing was announced in March as the Texas-based company, like many theater chains, was struggling to recover from closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Naman Ramachandran Warner Bros.’ chiller “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” topped the box office with £2,708,455 ($3,839,694) in its opening week as the U.K.