Summer Hot, Summer Cool: A Specialty Box Office Recap

A scene from Armando Iannucci’s “In The Loop.” Image courtesy of IFC Films.

While noting this distinction is not meant to discredit their success - “Locker” in particular pulled off quite the feat in its $11.6 million and counting gross considering its Iraq War-infused subject matter - it remains an important distinction to make. Looking down the list of the summer’s top twenty-five limited releases (which you can find on page 2 of this story), nine of the top ten grossing films came from either Summit or one of four studio specialty divisions - Fox Searchlight, Focus Features, Sony Pictures Classics (which had an impressive 4 in the top 10), and Miramax (though the weak $2.7 million it grossed out of its lone entry “Cheri” is nothing to celebrate).

Now, this isn’t new news. Studio specialty divisions have been ruling the indie box office landscape since they started popping up in the mid-to-late 1990s. And the idea of what makes a film “successful” varies greatly between the vast scope of what people generally consider an “indie film” (the mildly disappointing $3.5 million Summit got out of “The Brothers Bloom” would have been a massive success for, say, Music Box Films’ “Seraphine”) - but it still seems like this summer didn’t bring the same merriment to smaller distribution companies than it did to Fox Searchlight and Focus.

Last summer, films like “Tell No One” (Music Box Films), “Elegy” (Samuel Goldwyn), “Man on Wire” (Magnolia), “The Fall” (Roadside Attractions), and independently released “Bottle Shock” all found grosses of $2 million or more. This year, Magnolia Pictures’ doc breakout “Food, Inc.” was the sole example of a film released by a non-Summit, non-subsidiary distributor to gross over $2 million. 

IFC Films’ release of Armando Iannucci’s “In The Loop” should soon join it.  IFC’s Mark Boxer believes that film’s success shows audiences can still get excited about truly independent film. “‘In The Loop’ was a true summer hit for us as audiences wanted to laugh during these tough [times],” Boxer told indieWIRE. “The film opened incredibly strong and continues to hold in theatres through Labor Day.”

But for every success story like “Food,” “Loop,” or other examples like IFC’s French import “Summer Hours,” International Film Circuit’s surprising stronghold “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” and the burgeoning doc wunderkind that could be Roadside’s “The September Issue,” there were multiple major disappointments. Samuel Goldwyn struggled with “Management” and “Cold Souls,” despite the presence of a Hollywood star - Jennifer Aniston - in the former; Regent Releasing - also hoping for cash returns on a star presence, this time Robert Pattinson - couldn’t get $500,000 out of “Little Ashes”;  Roadside Attractions had a big disappointment in Sundance award winner “The Cove,” which has grossed only $619,467 so far; Francis Ford Coppola only managed $454,823 out of “Tetro,” released through his American Zeotrope, and Magnolia Pictures couldn’t get either Lynn Shelton’s much-buzzed “Humpday” or Kirby Dick’s widely-discussed doc “Outrage” to crack the limited release top 25.  Combined these disappointments mark a frustrating flipside to claims that this summer was a independent film gold mine.

However, one must keep in mind that with Magnolia Pictures and IFC Films in particular, there are evolving methods of attaining revenue. Both distributors are among those releasing their films day and date on VOD, and those numbers are rarely considered when judging a film’s overall financial performance.  Magnolia’s Eamonn Bowles actually reported that the past 12 months have been by far the most profitable ever for the distributor, despite what would appear based on theatrical numbers.

“We had an excellent summer,” Bowles told indieWIRE. “‘Food, Inc.’ bucked the social documentary downward trend to gross over $4 million, we had some huge successes on VOD, notably ‘Surveillance,’ which looks to be heading into 7 figures on VOD alone, and in general stayed solidly on the plus side. ‘Humpday’ was a bit of a disappointment. It’s a great film and we seemed to get an incredible amount of publicity and good will on it, but the surface descriptors (microbudget, mumblecore, gay porn, sophisticated bromance) made it a tough sell to a larger theatrical audience.”

So while VOD seems to really be rearing its head as a potential source of revenue (Bowles’ noted “Surveillance grossed just $27,349 in theaters - which makes its near 4000% increase on VOD quite stunning), theatrical will remain the prize everyone’s eyes are on as these distributors - studio-affliated or not - head into the fall, generally regarded as indie’s biggest hope for (often awards-fueled) returns.

[Check back with indieWIRE in the coming days for our preview of the next few months. But in the meantime, continue to the next page for a list of the top twenty five grossing limited releases of summer 2009.]

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Among these Summer specialty releases, which was your favorite?

	"Food, Inc." by Robert Kenner
	"Sex Positive" by Daryl Wein
	"Afghan Star" by Havana Marking
	"The Hurt Locker" by Kathryn Bigelow
	"Humpday" by Lynn Shelton
	"Lake Tahoe" by Fernando Eimbcke
	"(500) Days of Summer" by Marc Webb
	"A Woman in Berlin" by Max Farberbock
	"In the Loop" by Armando Iannucci
	"The Cove" by Louie Psihoyos
	"Cold Souls" by Sophie Barthes
	"Taking Woodstock" by Ang Lee
	"Still Walking" by Hirokazu Kore-eda
	"The September Issue" by R.J. Cutler
	"We Live in Public" by Ondi Timoner

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