It doesn’t have a single movie star, there were no early Thursday night screenings and you didn’t miss the trailer, because there wasn’t one. But “The Met: Live in HD” just missed the top ten on Rentrak’s box office charts this weekend.
Saturday’s live transmission of the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Verdi’s popular opera “Il Trovatore,” which kicked off the 10th season of the Met’s broadcasts from New York, grossed $2 million from 930 theaters in North America.
That topped Oscar hopeful “The Walk” ($1.5 million from 448 IMAX theaters), the Eli Roth horror film “The Green Inferno” ($1.3 million from 1,543) and left it about $400,000 behind the No. 10 film, “The Perfect Guy,” which was in 1,364 locations.
(It also beat “Jurassic World,” “The Minions” and “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” but those summer blockbusters are on the way out of theaters.)
“It wasn’t a record though,” NY Met spokesperson Lee Abrahamian told TheWrap Sunday. “We’ve had a production of ‘Carmen’ go up to $2.5 million.” Several theaters turned extra screens over to the Verdi transmission when the allotted screens sold out, she said.
An estimated 84,500 people attended the screenings produced by the Metropolitan Opera of New York and distributed in North America by Fathom Entertainment. An estimated additional 125,000 people saw it live on 800 screens in 35 countries in Europe, 11 countries in Latin America, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Jamaica, and Morocco.
The cast included Anna Netrebko, Dolora Zajick and Yonghoon Lee, and Marco Armiliato conducted David McVicar’s Goya-inspired production.
Encore screenings of “Il Trovatore” are on Wednesday in the U.S. and Saturday, Nov. 14 in Canada.