‘The Fabelmans’ Earns Solid $40,000 Average at Specialty Box Office

thewrap.com:

That figure is just a few hundred dollars above the $39,655 platform release average of Focus Features’ “Tár” and below the $46,113 of Searchlight’s “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Though it isn’t the best platform launch among the early Oscar contenders this awards season, Universal said that it had projected a $40,000 average for “The Fabelmans” prior to release and were pleased by the film’s Friday-to-Saturday drop of just 3%, signaling that the film is gaining the kind of word-of-mouth it will need in the weeks ahead. “With ‘The Fabelmans,’ Steven Spielberg has crafted one of his most personal stories yet, an incredible universal coming of age story that clearly resonated with audiences this weekend earning an A CinemaScore, 96% audience and 95% critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes and we have no doubt the film will captivate audiences throughout the holiday season,” Universal’s domestic distribution president Jim Orr said in a statement.

Back in September, “The Fabelmans” won the coveted audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, an award whose winner has been at least nominated for the Best Picture Oscar 12 out of the past 13 years with five Best Picture winners among them.

That buzz has made Spielberg’s film a key test as studios and theaters are hoping that late-year awards contenders are still a reliable moneymaker at the box office and are not relegated by the majority of moviegoers to “wait until streaming” status.

Spielberg’s previous film, “West Side Story,” bombed last year with $76 million grossed globally against a $100 million budget, a victim of older moviegoer reluctance to head to theaters amidst last winter’s COVID-19 Omicron variant outbreak.