Benefiting from a rave review in the NY Times, Stephen Higgins and Nina Gilden Seavey's THE MATADOR took top honors at the box office last weekend, with a strong opening at NYC's Angelika Film Center. Figures vary for the City Lights release - with BOM reporting $6,695 and iW saying that the film made $7,604. (You can find our own very positive reaction to the film here.)
Finding less success was the Slamdance award winner, DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER, the first acquisition of MSNBC Films and the latest release from upstart Oscilloscope. Playing exclusively at NYC's Cinema Village, the film took in just under $3K.
That was just a bit more than the second weekend of Zeitgeist's STRANDED: I HAVE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS, continuing its exclusive run at Film Forum. The film, which was recently nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the IDA Awards, expands to LA and SF this weekend.
Meanwhile, RELIGULOUS, the biggest theatrical doc of 2008, continues to do well, cruising this weekend past $11M and well on its way to $12M, which will rank it just higher than SUPER SIZE ME and WINGED MIGRATION on the all-time nonfiction chart. Already, the top three nonfiction features of 2008 have made more than the top three of 2003 (WINGED, TUPAC: RESURRECTION and SPELLBOUND), the year that talk of documentaries being "hot" began.
Further down the list, Werner Herzog's ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD has now edged past Nanette Burstein's AMERICAN TEEN for 9th place on the chart.
The top 15 nonfiction theatrical docs of 2008 are after the jump.
1. RELIGULOUS (Lionsgate) $11,532,928
2. U23D (National Geographic) $ 9,602,337
3. EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED (Rocky) $ 7,614,754
4. SHINE A LIGHT (Paramount Vantage) $ 5,355,376
5. YOUNG@HEART (Fox Searchlight) $ 3,966,690
6. MAN ON WIRE (Magnolia) $ 2,771,553
7. UP THE YANGTZE (Zeitgeist/KinoSmith) $ 1,366,475
8. GONZO (Magnolia) $ 1,248,502
9. ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (THINK) $ 943,934
10. AMERICAN TEEN (Paramount Vantage) $ 942,411
11. I.O.U.S.A. (Roadside Attractions) $ 773,501
12. VINCE VAUGHN'S WILD WEST... (Picturehouse) $ 603,894
13. TROUBLE THE WATER (Zeitgeist) $ 425,461
14. WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA... (Weinstein) $ 384,955
15. THE SINGING REVOLUTION (Abramorama) $ 335,707
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