Movie buffs and those in the industry eagerly await the weekend box office report to see how newly-released movies rank. Those statistics may be completely moot when theaters are closed. But the report still came out this week, and the Weekend Domestic Chart for April 17 lists Resistance and Swallow as tied for the number one spot. Both movies grossed $2,490 from one theater. It was a double feature at the Ocala Drive-In in Ocala, Florida. Slashfilm explains the weirdness.
This doesn’t mean that there’s only one theater open in the entire country — there are still a fair few drive-in theaters (official and makeshift) across the U.S. that are still open — but it seems Ocala is the only one still showing new releases and reporting their grosses. The majority of drive-in theaters show repertory screenings of older or classic films. But perhaps other drive-in theaters could take note of Ocala’s newfound renown — it is making headlines, after all — and start showing new releases so that we could get a fuller box office report. For now, it seems like the No. 1 movie at the U.S. box office is the unnerving Haley Bennett-starring thriller Swallow.
Contrast the report with the one from February 14, which had Sonic the Hedgehog at #1. It grossed $58 million in its opening weekend. The charts may fill out a bit when warmer weather spurs more drive-ins to open, but that still won't make more new movies available. -via reddit
Rightly so.