Box Office: Woody’s “Whatever” Worked Well This Weekend (UPDATED)

“Food, Inc.“‘s much more aggressive expansion this weekend wasn’t without its merits. The Magnolia Pictures-released food industry expose grossed $280,000 from 51 screens, which shot it into the overall top twenty, and kept it’s average at a promising $5,490.  Its $377,726 total already makes it one of the year’s top ten grossing documentaries, and it should soon join “Valentino: The Last Emperor” and “Every Little Step” in that exceedingly rare $1 million doc box office club.

”“Tetro,” Francis Ford Coppola’s family saga released through his American Zoetrope, expanded the most mildly of three - from 2 to 8 screens - and grossed $55,423, averaging $6,928 and taking its total to $106,870. Though it could potentially outgross Coppola’s last film, “Youth Without Youth,” by next weekend, its unlikely the film can recoup even a fraction of its $15 million budget.

Besides “Whatever Works,” other reporting openers this weekend included Andy Abrahams Wilson’s dramatic tale of microbes, medicine and money, “Under Our Skin,”  which managed a decent $7,100 from one screen, while Tommy Wirkola’s Norwegian horror flick “Dead Snow,” similarly took in $6,037 for IFC from one engagement.  Tatia Rosenthal’s stop motion animated feature “$9.99,” grossed $11,027 on two screens for Regent Releasing, averaging $5,513, while Alexander Olch’s doc “The Windmill Movie” grossed $3,731 over the weekend at the Film Forum, bringing its cume to $9,123 since opening the previous Wednesday.
Among holdovers, two foreign films had notable weekends. Here Media and Regent Releasing’s surprise Oscar winner “Departures” continued to pull in good numbers in its, grossing another $108,204 from 27 screens.  Its $4,007 average is an enviable for a fourth weekend foreign language release, showing limited signs of slow down as the film’s total pushes to $481,491.  Meanwhile, French import “Summer Hours” dropped 2 screens and only 2% of its gross as it swept past the $1 million mark. IFC’s Olivier Assayas drama grossed another $120,000 to bring its total to $1,141,000.

Finally, the third weekend of aforementioned “Away We Go” continued to suggest the film is becoming the summer’s first major specialty breakthrough. On 132 theaters, the Sam Mendes road trip dramedy grossed $903,936, averaging $6,848 and placing 13th overall.  With a total cume of $1,969,825, the film is tracking just slightly behind “Sunshine Cleaning,” really the year’s only major specialty breakthrough thus far, which had grossed $2,477,704 after three weekends with a very similar expansion.

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.