Ken Russell's ‘The Devils' Extends Theatrical Run Indefinitely (!) After $3.3M Box Office Surprise

Nobody expected a 55-year-old NC-17 movie to be one of the surprise box office stories of the fall. Yet here we are, and this absolutely puts a smile on my face.

Ken Russell's "The Devils," the first release from Warner Bros.' new specialty label Clockwork, was supposed to be a one-week event. That plan is gone. After the restored version opened, Clockwork announced it would keep the film in theaters past its original one-week run, and the label will keep watching ticket sales and leave it in theaters as long as it keeps performing, according to press release.

The numbers explain why. The film opened in only 350 North American locations to $1.8M, a per-screen average of over $5000. Demand was there well before release, too. 35mm preview screenings at 10 locations sold out instantly, more than six weeks before opening day, and every festival screening sold out, including stops at Cannes, TIFF, NYFF, Beyond Fest and BFI London.

Now past its second weekend, "The Devils" sits at $3.3M. For a repertory title, that's a remarkable result.

When Clockwork first announced the restoration for Cannes back in May, I called it one of the most significant restoration announcements in years. This was never going to be a cleaned-up reissue. It's the uncensored version of a film Warner Bros. itself butchered and buried for decades. Then came the NC-17 rating, which, as I wrote at the time, was basically free marketing. It's the first NC-17 release in Warner Bros.' 103-year history. The audience showed up for exactly that.

For the uninitiated, "The Devils" tells the story of Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), a 17th-century priest accused of witchcraft after a wave of supposed demonic possessions in France. Vanessa Redgrave plays Sister Jeanne des Anges, the sexually repressed, hunchbacked nun whose confession sets the accusations in motion. Behind it all is Cardinal Richelieu, who wants Grandier gone because he stands between him and control of the town.

Russell adapted it from Aldous Huxley's 1952 book "The Devils of Loudun" and John Whiting's stage play, and he treats the material as a portrait of total madness, where religion and state power collapse into spectacle and violence. It's a feverish, almost trance-like experience.

The craftsmanship is just as remarkable. David Watkin, who later won an Oscar for "Out of Africa," shot it. Michael Bradsell edited it. And a young Derek Jarman made his feature debut as production designer — how can you not notice those starkly white-tiled sets that look like nothing else. Oh, and of course, Peter Maxwell Davies' score is an assault on the senses.

Of course, the film's reputation has always been tied to what was taken out of it. It received an X rating in both the UK and the U.S., but only after heavy cuts. The most infamous loss was the so-called "Rape of Christ" sequence, in which the nuns tear down a crucifix in an orgiastic frenzy. Russell himself considered it the key scene and said Warner Bros. had cut out the best part of his film.

The footage wasn't lost forever, though. Critic Mark Kermode tracked it down in the Warner Bros. vaults, and in 2004 the cut was reconstructed under Russell's supervision with Kermode, Bradsell and Paul Joyce. That 2004 edit and runs 1 hour and 54 minutes. Russell, who died in 2011, never saw it get a proper release. He'd surely have gotten a real kick to see it playing like gangbusters in 2026.

"The Devils" is now playing across North America. BFI releases it in the UK and Ireland on October 30.