Tom Hanks‘ latest film, “A Man Called Otto,” has become a box-office success. The film opened in just a few theaters late last year, but has progressively gained in momentum over these last few weeks.
‘Otto’ grossed $15.3 million in its third–weekend of wide expansion over the four-day MLK holiday, well surpassing its $8M projection. Word of mouth is spreading quite nicely for the Marc Foster helmed film. It might even hit the $70-80 million mark when all is said and done — a huge COVID-era success.
This is all rather stunning given the recent failures of more highly regarded dramas like “The Fabelmans,” “Women Talking,” “TÁR” and “Till.” The problem might just be that people didn’t really care for the marketing of these films, the trailers and stories told didn’t win them over.
Critics haven’t been doing somersaults over ‘Otto’, and I’m with them. It’s a very enjoyable movie for 2/3 of its runtime and then it takes a very soapy turn in its final stretch that just didn’t win me over at all. Think of it as a more gentle PG version of “Gran Torino.”
‘Otto’ currently has a 69% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, general audiences seem to adore the film, giving it a 97% approval on RT and 7.5 on IMDB.
Still no distributor for "Bucking Fastard," "Alpha Gang," "The Last Photograph," "Closing Night," and "The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd." The issue seems to be quality more than a lack of willingness to buy.