UPDATED: Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” is estimated to get the best limited per-theater average since 2017’s “La La Land.”
The film is expected to earn around $800k in only 6 theaters over the 3-day weekend. That’s an incredible amount — far and away the best for an indie in the pandemic-era. Anderson’s film is supposed to go wide next weekend.
There have been a few films this year, which went into wide release, that barely made more than the six-theater total of Anderson’s film. Whether you like him or not, this is a huge win for the arthouse scene.
Have any readers seen it this weekend in any of these six NYC/L.A. theaters?
Last week I reassessed the film, which I was originally mixed on when it was first screened at Cannes in May:
When I first watched "Asteroid City" at the Cannes Film Festival last month, my response was lukewarm towards the film. However, I saw it again last Tuesday, and it clicked.
With Anderson, his films are so filled with the smallest of details in every frame that a second viewing can be beneficial in the way you can deconstruct the details.
Watching an Anderson film a second time is the least we should do to truly appreciate his work, especially if you first saw it during the chaos of a festival like Cannes. And so, this re-evaluation of "Asteroid City," after disappointment at Cannes, was a pleasurable surprise.
This is a film that seems, at first glance, to push some tendencies of the filmmaker to their very limits—in this case, the artificiality of the sets and figures, the accelerated sequence of shots and vignettes, the iconographic fetishism—until you zone out.
Re-watching the film, I was allowed to go beyond my first viewing and understand that this was a fresher and more original statement than originally perceived. In fact, "Asteroid City" is pure experimentation on the part of Anderson. It’s a statement on science and religion, life and death, that feels as obsessive and meticulous as these topics deserve.
In a way, the knowledge and perceptions that we have of what to expect from Anderson’s films can prevent us from firmly grasping this new film.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.