Box Office Report: I Don't Need Your Civil War

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 15, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 15, 2024 |

A24 is the coolest kid at the party when it comes to indie distributors, but they’ve not always been major players at the box office. Last year, it was reported that the company was eager to get behind more mainstream projects that could ensure more frequent commercial hits. Well, it seems as though they might have a decent-sized one on their hands this month.

Alex Garland’s Civil War opened with a weekend tally of $25.7 million from 3,838 theatres. That’s a new high for A24. The dystopian drama has given them their largest opening weekend ever. Deadline reported that the film is also their most expensive title, apparently, with a budget of about $50 million (plus $20 million or so in marketing costs.) The second week numbers will be interesting. Can they hold onto that buzz, even with middling reviews and some decent-sized competition on the horizon? Stay tuned.

New at number eight is The Long Game, a sports drama about golf, with $1.39 million from 1,030 theatres. That put it just ahead of the 2024 re-release of Shrek 2. Gen Z really loves this franchise, apparently. It earned a decent $1.35 million from 1,512 locations. Right behind that is SUGA | Agust D TOUR ‘D-DAY’ THE MOVIE (I didn’t add the caps.) It’s a concert film featuring one of the guys from BTS. It grossed $990,881.

Arcadian is a horror film starring Nicolas Cage as a father fighting to keep his sons safe at the end of the world. It opened to 1,100 theatres and earned $481,000. The era of Nic Cage making consistently interesting movies is a good one to live in.

Escape from Germany is a historical drama about LDS missionaries escaping the country on the eve of the Second World War. It’s part of the Mormon cinema scene, which is a whole ecosystem I do not pretend to know anything about. But, like more traditional Christian movies, it has a devoted audience and makes money. This one brought in $165,743 from only 40 screens.

On the other end of the cinematic spectrum is Sasquatch Sunset, a comedy where Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough play, you guessed it, a Sasquatch family. They grunt and groan and apparently get super gross. Don’t confuse that one with the Mormon movie. It earned $93,005 from nine places.

In limited release news: The Absence of Eden, a thriller about an ICE agent’s moral panic that stars Zoe Saldaña and was directed by her husband (also Tom Waits is in it?!), earned $21,610 from 110 locations; and It’s Only Life After All, a musical documentary about the Indigo Girls, made $14,150 from 14 theatres.

This coming week sees the release of the ballerina vampire film Abigail and Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.