Happy ‘Substance’ day! I hope you’re all making it a priority to see this film over the weekend, and not “Beetlejuice” or “Transformers One”. There’s also the Aaron Schimberg’s terrific “A Different Man” now playing in L.A. and N.Y. — that film actually makes for a great body-horror double header with ‘Substance.’
Coraline Fargeat’s “The Substance” is an instant body-horror classic, and an absolute onslaught of audacity, sound, imagery and blood. It won the Screenplay prize at Cannes this past May. Demi Moore deserves an Oscar nomination for her career-best work here. You can read my Cannes review (05.20.24)
Yes, the best horror movie of the year is now in theaters. “The Substance” has already minted $840k in previews. The indie film, currently booked in over 1,950 theaters nationwide, was projected at a $3M start, but might now surpass that.
It helps that reviews have been great, and so have the audience scores of 83%, PostTrak of 80% and 4 stars. “The Substance” cost $17.5M when it was at Universal, Mubi ended up buying worldwide rights from them at Cannes.
Compare ‘Substance’ nabbing $840K to the other genre release this week, the Halle Berry led dystopian thriller “Never Let Go,” which cost $20M to produce, and only ended up making $360k in previews last night. This could be yet another bomb added to Lionsgate’s disastrous 2024 slate.
This year has seen a shift in indie film distribution, going wide is the new platform. IndieWire’s Tom Brueggemann is reporting that “Conclave” (Focus), “Megalopolis” (Lionsgate), and “The Apprentice” (Briarcliff) will also go wide between now and the end of October. Pre-COVID, they would have most likely only debuted in New York and Los Angeles theaters.