While blockbusters are currently taking a small lull in between Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Everything Everywhere All at Once continues to chug along at the box office happily! The A24 black comedy has breached the $35 million milestone in North America after a very successful six-week run in theaters! Quite the impressive feat for an indie arthouse film!
Everything Everywhere All at Once was directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The film stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, a Chinese immigrant who is yanked (quite literally) into a crazy adventure to save the world by jumping from one universe to the next. The film takes place in a multiverse, a concept that average moviegoers are no stranger to now thanks to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the upcoming Doctor Strange. However, this movie does NOT play by Marvel’s rules when it comes to the multiverse concept and ends up becoming quite the surreal journey. Starring in the film along with Yeoh is Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Jenny Slate and Jamie Lee Curtis.
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The film hasn’t even dropped this far out since its initial release. This past weekend, Everything Everywhere All at Once pulled in an additional $5.5 million from over 2,000 cinemas (a 2% increase from last weekend). Notably, $850,000 of that was from the 256 IMAX screens.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is Bigger than You Realize
A24
What makes the success of Everything Everywhere All at Once so intriguing is how it’s one of the first indie movies released during the pandemic that benefitted from a platform release. A platform release is when a film is released in a few theaters to boost word-of-mouth, then undergoing a wider release after the hype has been built. It’s a common strategy for indie and arthouse films, but has had less than stellar results during COVID-19. This is because those first releases are typically in large cities such as New York City and Los Angeles, which had shuttered theaters for the longest time during the pandemic. Even after audiences grew more comfortable returning to cinemas, older audience members (the target demographic for indie arthouse) were still hesitant to come back. This is why such movies as Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman were enjoying box office success while films such as Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley drew in less attention.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, however, seemed to break that curse upon indie films and was able to drum up the right hype before spreading nationwide across theaters for eager audiences. David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research points out the truth in indie and arthouse success to Variety.
Everything Everywhere All at Once currently holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and has been highly praised by critics and audiences alike. The film, which took $25 million to produce, will still need to keep up the momentum in theaters to be considered a success. But A24 executives are eager to keep it in theaters due to the positive ratings.
