If you happened to see Gareth Evans's The Raid 2 in theaters this weekend, there is a pretty good chance you were among the only ones in the theater. Expanding into 954 theaters in its third weekend of release, the critically-acclaimed action sequel from Sony Pictures Classics earned $956,000, or about $1,003 per-screen. That's an almost identical figure to the expansion of The Raid two years ago, which earned $961,454 on 881 screens for a $1,091 per-screen average during its fourth week of release. Sony Pictures Classics arguably had to know they probably weren't going to break out, but they went wide anyway. For that they deserve our praise and our thanks.
There was a period when I was constantly discussing the copious would-be dramas and comedies, the kind that would have been mainstream releases a decade ago, which were being platformed to death. Back then, it was films like Michael Douglas's Solitary Man, Will Ferrell's Everything Must Go, or Brad Pitt's The Tree of Life. Even with their low-key or artier ambitions, they might have found a decent audience with proper marketing yet were left to languish in the art house circuit or somewhat limited (300 or fewer theaters) before exiting the marketplace with a lower domestic cume than might have been achieved with a single halfway decent wide release debut weekend. Conversely Weinstein Company went wide on Our Idiot Brother and netted $25 million for the $5m Paul Rudd comedy.
Much of this comes down to what studio handles a given film, but the fact remains that films which would have been mainstream releases 10-15 years ago are now considered glorified art house pictures. Whether a delightful comedy like Cedar Rapids could have far surpassed its $6 million gross with a conventional release, whether Lionsgate bungled the semi-wide release of The Perks of Being A Wallflower ($17m) after a $57,000 per-screen four-screen debut, or how much Focus Features spent on their $9m and $13m debut weekends for The Debt and The American respectfully, is a matter for discussion of course. But the notion of what constitutes a first run wide release theatrical picture seems to grow slimmer and slimmer each year in as more would-be blockbusters take up more 2D, 3D, and IMAX auditoriums in even the largest multiplexes.
We spent so much time declaring Margin Call a victory for the newly emerging Video On Demand format in late 2011 that we barely stopped to notice that an all-star drama (Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, etc.) about a topical subject (the financial crash of 2008) wasn't considered worthy of a mainstream theatrical release. And what are we to make of the fact that a mainstream, star-filled (Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo) romantic comedy like Focus Features's The Kids Are Alright was considered an art house film in 2010 that had to earn $20m the hard way?
Every year we get at least a few seemingly mainstream films that never seem to end up expanding to what one would consider a wide release. Short Term 12 never made it past 75 screens despite being universally hailed as one of the year's best films. I'd argue A24 waited too long to expand the much-buzzed about Miles Teller/Shailene Woodley drama The Spectacular Now, waiting until its seventh week of release to reach even 700 screens (cue $6.8 million gross). While Millennium Entertainment deserved credit for keeping Bernie in limited release all summer long in 2012, earning $9m despite never playing on more than 332 screens, it stands to reason that the Jack Black/Shirley MacClaine/Matthew McConaughey comedy would have been considered a top-shelf first-run theatrical attraction a decade ago.
Focus Features (The Place Beyond the Pines, The Moonrise Kingdom, etc.) and
And that, I would argue, is the victory. All weekend long, my Twitter and Facebook feed was filled with action junkies outside of the big cities counting down the minutes until they could at last see The Raid 2. Last weekend, action fans in Indianapolis, Indiana or Viera, Florida didn't have to wait for DVD. They got to drive to a theater near them and watching some of the most impressive action sequences in recent memory in a first run movie theater. The Raid 2 probably won't make $5 million total. It can be argued that Sony went too wide and could have gotten similar grosses on a smaller number of theaters. Considering the results, I can't completely fault Sony if a theoretical The Raid 3 never expands beyond a few major cities. But if you're a film fan who still likes seeing all manner of movies big and small in theaters, you owe Sony Pictures Classics a tiny bit of gratitude.
The expansion of pre-release or day-and-date Video On Demand for smaller would-be art house films has been an absolute boon for film lovers outside of the kind of cities that never would have played Nymphomaniac, Joe, or Cheap Thrills. The kinds of films that I once lamented dying in platform release are now often available to watch in DVD-quality streams before theatrical or during theatrical for the price of a first-run movie ticket. And it's hard to say to Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate or A24 to basically "lose money or risk an already secured minor profit" on films like In A World or Enemy for the principle of first-run theatrical exhibition.
But it's also tough to argue for the essential nature of the theatrical experience when so many theaters are showing the same handful of studio releases and many of the year's best films are DVD premieres for most of the country. The problem, too few releases monopolizing the vast majority of the theaters, is one I don't have a solution for. But every time a film like The Raid 2 or The Master, or Bad Words plays wide enough for most conceivable moviegoers to see it at a local first-run theater, it's a win for the theatrical experience and a win for cinema whether or not that film ends up making enough money to justify the expansion.
On behalf of those who got to see The Raid 2 at a theater near them, and as a film writer who still believes the first-run theatrical experience for all kinds of films is worth fighting for, Sony Pictures Classics deserves our thanks this weekend. They had to know that a 2.5 hour, ultra-violent foreign language action film was unlikely to break out beyond the already converted. They fell on the sword (or hammer) so that fans living outside of New York and LA could enjoy the film as it was meant to be seen. Expanding The Raid 2 onto so many screens may not have been good business, and but it was unquestionably good.
