First, as posted earlier today, Gran Torino's marketing campaign was completely altered from that of an old fashioned Race film to a bizarre Buddy Movie plotline.
Then a search for theaters in the Washington, DC area playing Gran Torino this weekend, Christmas Weekend, the biggest weekend of the year, reveals ZERO theaters in Virginia. Only 2 in Downtown DC and one in Bethesda, Maryland.
First thought would suggest a box office receipt problem, perhaps Gran Torino isn't making enough money in its limited release to warrant a larger expansion. But further investigation reveals that in its first week in release Gran Torino made 271K while playing on only 6 screens in the entire country. That's a per-screen average of 45k, the largest per screen average of any film in release! Then, second week the studio decided to only expand the film to 19 screens and yet it still made an average of 25k, a large decline per screen but still enough to make it the 2nd highest per screen average in the country.
So why is Warner Brothers failing to back Clint Eastwood's latest masterpiece? Is there a conspiracy against this film that we aren't aware of? What is the real story? We Has Spoken demands an answer. And also demands an opening in Northern Virginia on Christmas Weekend.
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1 comment:
Well done on this piece. The Gran Torino series of posts is definitely WHS' first venture into investigative reporting, this marks us as a true news source. I'm very proud.
As for the movie, I can only imagine that Clint just rattles off some serious insults in it and the studio wants to just present this thing slow and steady to the country.
WHS is going to celebrate in the theater like no other on Friday. John's going to have to book a flight to dc instead of ny.
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