This is very bad news. I wasn't expecting anything over $25 million. But what other movie opens with virtually no box office and then goes on to $100 million two months later? After a week or two box office usually trails off.
The MSM did their job, that's for sure.
I'm guessing it will make a few bucks in Europe and Japan.
Box Office Mojo shows $14 in production costs. Most of the publicity I mentioned is free. So it's easy to be in the black, pun intended.
The kind that is released into whatever theaters they can find before the end of the year so that it's eligible for awards, and not put into general release until later.
What do I win?
A fair number of movies are released this way. Million Dollar Baby didn't break 10 million for 6 weeks, but went on to make over 100 million in the US alone. I couldn't find the figures for Mystic River, but I presume they were similar - it ended up at 90 million domestic. Not every movie is released as a Hollywood blockbuster - in fact, the current way of doing it is fairly new. Even Star Wars opened on a few screens, then expanded - that used to be the norm. Now the studios want all the money in the first week (where their take is largest) and before word of mouth gets to ruin to the movie. So in that sense, you're right: most modern movies make all their money in the first few weeks and then disappear. But there are still a fair number of movies that succeed the old-fashioned way - by building an audience slowly.