Joachim Trier’s Int’l Oscar Nominee ‘The Worst Person In The World’ Zooms Past $1M In Week 3: Specialty Box Office Update

MONDAY UPDATES for Worst Person, Ted K, The Cursed, Strawberry Mansion, and adding The Automat.

Neon’s standout romance about a young woman in Oslo churning though career choices and boyfriends passed $1 million this weekend on 265 screens, up from 49 in a major expansion. With marketing in high gear and strong word of mouth, the Oscar Best International Feature nominee will continue to add screens.

The distrib said Monday Worst Person In The World grossed $490,967 for three days (Friday-$138,940; Saturday-$189,774; Sunday-$162,253) for a PSA of $1,853 and a cume of nearly $1.1 million, continuing to draw auds to its mix of pathos, humor, insight and strong storytelling. It crossed the $1M mark in just three weeks with a limited print count — faster than other recent specialized fare of note, the distrib observed, from Parallel Mothers and Red Rocket to Drive My Car and C’mon C’mon.

On Sunday, it forecast a $93,500 take on Presidents Day.

The film — whose star Renate Reinsve won Best Actress at Cannes where it premiered — shot out of the gate Feb. 6, jolting a hard to please specialty market whose core older demos have been slow to return to theaters. It grossed $135,042 in Week 1 at four NY/LA theaters for a popping per screen average of $33,768. (It’s received two BAFTA nominations, Best Foreign Language Film and Actress for Reinsve.)

Neon had cited early presales and social traction for Worst Person launching with the highest PSA of any foreign language film of the past two years after Parasite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire; in the top 20 PSAs of all time for a foreign language film; and the largest opening for any Norwegian film. Word of mouth since release has been strong.

Elsewhere in specialty:

A Slice of Pie Productions opened The Automat at the Film Forum in NYC to a hefty $18,622. The doc by Lisa Hurwitz (which premiered at Telluride) will add two more screens in LA 2/25. A tale of the iconic NYC/Philly eatery from Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart that thrived for most of the 1900s, dispensing fresh-cooked food in coin vending machines. Carl Reiner, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Colin Powell and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz reminisce. Mel Brooks even wrote a song for the film called ‘At The Automat.’

Newcomer Strawberry Mansion from Music Box Films reported an updated 3-day weekend gross Monday of $34,004, for a PSA of $1,259. In the romance-fantasy, an unassuming dream auditor gets swept up in a cosmic journey.

So did Ted K from Super LTD. It’s looking at opening weekend grosses of $20,851 (Friday-$8,559; Saturday-$8,140; Sunday-$4,152) for a PSA of $725. On Sunday, Super LTD estimated a Monday gross of $4,500 for the tale of a former university professor living a life of complete seclusion in a wooden cabin in the Montana mountains who becomes America’s infamous terrorist, the Unabomber.

The Cursed from LD Entertainment. Not exactly specialty, this reimagining of the classic werewolf legend was marketed as a straight horror movie on 1,687 screens. It grossed $1.76M for a PSA of $1,042 (Friday-$600,335; Saturday-$660,308; Sunday-$497,605), LD said Monday. With today’s forecast at $248,802, it’s looking at a  4-day gross of over $2M for the film written and directed by Sean Ellis that debuted at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival under the title Eight For Silver. 

Holdover Compartment No. 6 from Sony Pictures Classics, now in Week 4, earned $15,084 on 11 screens (last week 8), a PSA of $1,371 and cume of $68,579.