Sure, FCT is all about amateur films, but we’ve been following Son of Rambow for over a year now (I wrote about it in one of this site’s very first posts). Since then, I’ve been waiting for its release so I could see it—and now that it debuted this past weekend, I still haven’t seen it, because it’s only playing in FIVE theaters across the U.S.
On the surface, that sounds pretty bad, but in fact, it turns out Rambow is doing pretty well. According to the AP, it brought in $52,549 for the weekend, which breaks down to a per-screen average of $10,510—very solid. Word has it that Paramount Vantage wants to release it slowly in hopes of creating this year’s Juno (another movie I haven’t seen yet).
Critics are digging the movie though, and it turns out this UK indie flick has already been a hit on its own turf, having debuted at #2 over there last month, raking up nearly £1 million in its first four days of release. The film ran in theaters for a total of four weeks there, bringing home £3,864,769 according to IMDB, for a theatrical take around $7.8 million. Ironically, that’s about what Paramount paid to buy the movie last year at the Sundance film festival, so the company isn’t going to settle for a $50K box-office take, but is apparently going for a ‘platform’ release instead, opening it in different areas slowly, one after another.
For fan filmmakers, it’s a good thing if only because anything that portrays fan filmmaking in a positive light—and which helps explain this hobby to regular folks—is a good thing.
Ed’s new movie Son of Rambow looks awesome. Can’t wait to see it.