Alex Gibney's GONZO became the 6th nonfiction film of 2008 to gross more than a million dollars at the North American box office. The Magnolia release has made nearly 4x the amount TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, Gibney's 2008 Oscar winner, made earlier in the year.
The weekend also saw the first expansion of another Magnolia title, James Marsh's MAN ON WIRE, thought by many to be the frontrunner for next year's Oscars. In returns just from this weekend, WIRE matched TAXI's entire run gross of $274,000.
Magnolia currently has 3 films on our box office chart - the only distributor with that many. It had three last weekend as well, although WIRE has supplanted Doug Pray's SURFWISE, which is currently in 16th position.
A continued expansion was less successful for Nanette Burstein's AMERICAN TEEN, which doubled its number of screens but took in less money overall than it had the previous weekend. The film is now beginning to trail IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON, which had a somewhat similar rollout and which TEEN had previously posted comparable (or better) averages. Both TEEN and WIRE finish the weekend just shy of half a million.
There were two very successful New York doc premieres over the weekend, led by Aaron Rose's BEAUTIFUL LOSERS, which took in more than $10K for producer/distributor Sidetrack Films at the IFC Center. Close behind was Steven Sebring's PATTI SMITH DREAM OF LIFE, which finished the weekend just shy of $10K after an exclusive debut at Film Forum.
(We previously wrote about BEAUTIFUL LOSERS' SXSW premiere here and wrote here about DREAM OF LIFE at Sundance.)
Here's the box office top 15 of 2008 through this weekend:
1. U23D (National Geographic) $ 9,235,719
2. EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED (Rocky) $ 7,614,754
3. SHINE A LIGHT (Paramount Vantage) $ 5,355,376
4. YOUNG@HEART (Fox Searchlight) $ 3,910,407
5. UP THE YANGTZE (Zeitgeist/KinoSmith) $ 1,226,443
6. GONZO (Magnolia) $ 1,031,095
7. ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (THINK) $ 723,966
8. VINCE VAUGHN'S WILD WEST... (Picturehouse) $ 603,894
9. AMERICAN TEEN (Paramount Vantage) $ 466,362
10. MAN ON WIRE (Magnolia) $ 435,943
11. WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA... (Weinstein) $ 384,955
12. THE SINGING REVOLUTION (Abramorama) $ 317,919
13. BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER* (Magnolia) $ 305,776
14. TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE (THINKFilm) $ 274,661
15. PLANET B-BOY (Elephant Eye) $ 273,870
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