After two weeks of slim pickings during the Cannes Film Festival, the floodgates opened on the art house release slate as several new titles arrived in theaters.
Among them, two single-digit-screen releases, A24’s “The Exception” and IFC’s “Band Aid,” had the highest per-screen-averages this weekend.
“The Exception,” which is directed by David Leveaux, stars Jai Courtney as a WWII German soldier tasked with investigating the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II (Christopher Plummer). Released on two screens, the film made $23,337 and has a 78 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. “Band Aid,” which was directed, written by, and starring Zoe Lister-Jones, follows a feuding married couple on the verge of divorce who start a band as a way to channel their frustration into music and in doing so repair their relationship. The film grossed $31,500 from three screens and has a 86 percent RT score.
Other new releases include CBS Films’ “Dean,” a dramedy by comedian Demetri Martin which sees him star alongside Kevin Kline as a father and son looking to bond in the wake of losing the matriarch of their family. With a 55 percent RT score, the film made $60,366 from 15 screens for a PSA of $4,024.
The widest new release this weekend was Cohen Media Group’s “Churchill,” a biopic starring Brian Cox as the famed British prime minister. The film received just 36 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed $426,616 from 215 screens for an average of just under $2,000.
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Among documentaries, the Kickstarter-funded “Letters From Baghdad” scored a PSA of $9,125 from its pair of screens. The documentary tells the story of Gertrude Bell, a British intelligence officer who had a major influence in the future of Iraq and the Middle East following World War I and was an open critic of British colonialism. The film has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 80 percent.