Things may have looked good for Spider-Man, animated toys and alligator horror movies this weekend, but the A24 drama THE FAREWELL came out on top of a mountain of its own. After debuting in only 4 theaters this week (before a wider release this weekend), the drama from director Lulu Wang and starring Awkwafina packed in the limited locations and generated a tremendous $351,330, effectively putting it over the biggest movie of the year – AVENGERS: ENDGAME – for the best theater average of the year (via EW).
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The math comes out about $87,833 per location, and while ENDGAME smashed the record for the best opening weekend of all time with $357 million, it averaged about $76,601 per location. Propelling the movie’s success from these locations can not only be attributed to the standing 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes but also from the swell of support the movie is seeing on social media and from the #GoldOpen movement, which champions and supports movies from within the Asian-American community.
THE FAREWELL centers on Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese-American living in New York, who travels to China so that she and her family can spend time with her grandmother after she is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, only for Billi to learn her family (Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen Lu Hong, Jiang Yongbo and more) has no intention of telling her grandma she’s sick. Believed to be a contender come award season, the movie’s terrific opening here mimics the same success recent Best Picture nominees like LADY BIRD, CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, LINCOLN, THE FAVOURITE, MOONLIGHT, THE KING’S SPEECH, THE BIG SHORT and more achieved in their initial limited runs.
As for ENDGAME, well, being about $7 million away from matching AVATAR's all-time $2.788 billion total isn't too bad either.
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THE FAREWELL is in limited theaters now and will expand to more this weekend.