Box Office: “Away We” Goes High; Big Beach, Endgame Having Great ‘09 (UPDATED)

Like “Virtue,” IFC’s “Summer Hours” should hit the $1,000,000 mark within the next week or two. Olivier Assayas’ highly acclaimed French family drama grossed another $164,000 this weekend, averaging $3,417 and totaling an impressive $791,000 after 4 weeks.

Here Media’s and Regent Releasing’s Academy Award winning “Departures,” which had the highest PTA of any specialty film last weekend, held up nicely in its second frame.  On 16 screens the Japanese import grossed $88,102, finding a solid average of $5,506.  The total estimated gross for pic so far after two weeks is $192,442.

Besides “Away We Go,” other openers this weekend included Music Box Films’ French import “Seraphine,” which took in $39,500 from 6 screens.  The Séraphine Louis biopic averaged a decent $6,583, but remained a far cry from Music Box’s “Tell No One,” which opened around this time last summer to a stunning $21,213 average on 8 screens.  Similarly mild numbers met Oscilloscope’s “Unmistaken Child” and Arthouse Film’s “Herb & Dorothy.”  From its sole location at NYC’s Film Forum, “Child” - which follows the 4-year search for the reincarnation of Lama Konchog - grossed $6,039 over the weekend and totaled $9,500 since Wednesday.  “Herb” - the story of art collectors Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, launched on 2 screens and averaged a slightly worse $5,021.

Both films can be glad they didn’t meet the fate of Aaron Woodley’s “Tennessee.” Long delayed and co-starring Mariah Carey, the film grossed only $10,000 from 15 screens. Its $667 average means the film will not even find “Glitter”-sized numbers. That 2001 film, infamous for its disastrous critical and financial reception, averaged $2,008 in its opening frame. At least “Tennessee” made it to theaters. Carey’s 2002 effort “Wisegirls” went from Sundance to DVD.  One can only imagine Oprah-backed fall release “Precious” will break Carey’s cinematic losing streak.

Check back with indieWIRE for updated box office information in the coming days.

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indieWIRE:BOT tracks independent/specialty releases compiled from Rentrak Theatrical, which collects studio reported data as well as box-office figures from North American theatre locations. To be included in the indieWIRE Box Office Chart, distributors must submit information about their films to Rentrak at studiogrosses@rentrak.com  by the end of the day each Monday. Previous Page 2 of 2 Login to recommend this article » posted on June 7, 2009 Films to Snag Login to Leave a Comment »