It didn’t premiere at a film festival, it didn’t open in a platform release, and yet Celine Song‘s “Materialists” is quickly one of the bigger specialized box office success stories of the year. That’s because, in many ways, it’s not a specialized film at all.
With an estimated $12 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, “Materialists” is now the third-largest opening for an A24 film ever, behind only “Civil War” ($25.5 million) and “Hereditary” ($13.5 million).
Projections placed it between $7-8 million last week, so for it to finish at No. 3 ahead of “Mission: Impossible” and “Ballerina” is a huge feat. It did so from just over 2,800 screens, which is in the ballpark of some other A24 wide releases. It also continues a streak of solid successes for A24, all of them for original films, which includes “Warfare,” “Friendship,” and “Bring Her Back” all this summer (less so for “Death of a Unicorn” and “The Legend of Ochi”).
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But positioning “Materialists” in theaters was like playing matchmaker, with A24 needing to thread a needle between a core crowd that wants to see the latest film from the “Past Lives” director with the broader run audience that just wants to see a love triangle between movie stars like Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal. The distributor knew the film’s premise and starry cast could play to a more commercial audience, but it didn’t want to alienate the crowd that helped “Past Lives” make $42.6 million worldwide (just $11.3 million of that came domestic, which “Materialists” has already beat).
It’s surprising considering that so much of the discourse around “Materialists” is in how it blends genres and subverts some expectations. IndieWire alone had debates that the film is not a rom-com but a takedown of them, that the ending doesn’t mean what you think it does, and maybe that we’re just all talking about it all wrong. Marketing this movie was no easy task, and the film’s disappointing B- CinemaScore speaks to the frustration some audiences are feeling with Song’s twists and surprises.
A24 had its share of marketing activations that would feel more at home for a major studio release, such as briefly taking over the New York Stock Exchange sign to display rising and falling “romantic values” for single men looking for love who all submitted their attributes, turn-ons, and even salaries on a website. But in addition to some viral moments from Johnson and the rest of the cast, Song herself was a prominent facet of the marketing campaign, even generating her own viral moment after she told The New Yorker that “Zootopia” would be the final movie she would want to watch in a theater.
For audiences in New York and LA, where the film over-indexed, Song was the top driver for people to the theater, not necessarily the cast. As with many other A24 titles, “Materialists” is thriving because it put its creators front and center, eventizing the director in the way that Universal knew to make Christopher Nolan the face of “Oppenheimer” even more so than any of its movie stars.
Contrast that with Neon’s “The Life of Chuck,” which had an underwhelming ninth place finish with just $2.1 million for the weekend. That film too blends genres in a way that made it tricky to market, it has a starry cast that was front and center for all its promotion, and it too was released widely this weekend (though on just under 1100 screens). One could argue that its director, Mike Flanagan, has not been as front and center with the press as Song has, and it’s why “The Life of Chuck” could very easily find a second life on streaming, where Flanagan’s biggest hits have been and where audiences could discover it more easily.
A24 is hopeful that the film will have a long run with Song’s core audience creating a good footprint for weeks to come. But whether or not some of its other future releases get as wide of a rollout as “Materialists,” you can bet A24 is learning from the release strategy and will be positioning directors like Ari Aster and Benny Safdie for “Eddington” and “The Smashing Machine” just as much as it will tout Joaquin Phoenix and Dwayne Johnson. Not unlike “Sinners” earlier this year, audiences want original movies with commercial appeal, but it helps when auteurs are on hand to sell it to them.
