Why ‘A Man Called Otto’ Worked Outside NYC & LA With $15M+ Wide Opening

deadline.com:

In an age of streaming and Covid concerns when many older skewing dramatic films find their way safely into homes, Sony rolled the dice on the Tom Hanks drama A Man Called Otto with the title out-performing its MLK 4-day $8M third weekend wide expansion projections with $15.3M. The result took rival distributors by great surprise, many who were underwhelmed initially by the Marc Forster-directed title’s NYC and LA exclusive four-theater run over New Year’s weekend which did a $14K theater average/$56K opening, not to mention the lukewarm reviews (69% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes).

Sony, however, always knew they had the goods in an old-fashioned, moving title, one which would win over its audience, hence its A CinemaScore and 5 star exits on ComScore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak.

In some ways, it’s not shocking to see Sony hit a double at the box office; they’ve done so before with adult, often-female skewing properties such as last summer’s Where the Crawdads Sing ($17.2M, $90.2M domestic final), the fall’s novel The Woman King ($19M opening, $67M domestic) and pre-pandemic the big holiday sleeper Little Women ($16.7M, $108M domestic).

However at a time when the marketplace has lost faith in the durability of non-tentpole, non-genre movies, the overperformance of A Man Called Otto provides a tremendous amount of hope for older-skewing titles.