Club Kid Expands to 27 Screens as Young Audiences Turn Out

A24's Club Kid, the feature debut of Jordan Firstman, took in $756,000 in its second week on 27 screens, according to studio estimates reported by Deadline. The film has now earned $1.45 million in total.

That works out to a per-screen average of $28,000. Per-screen average is the takings divided by the number of cinemas showing the film, a quick way to compare a small release with a wide one. Deadline also reports that 80% of the audience was under 35.

James Gray's Paper Tiger opened on six screens in New York and Los Angeles, grossing $215,000. That is an average of $35,800 per screen. Deadline describes it as the director's highest per-screen opening. The film is a limited release, playing only in a few cinemas in two cities.

The big numbers came from wide releases. Wild Horse Nine grossed $4.6 million in its second week on 2,175 screens, lifting its cumulative total to $13.3 million. Victorian Psycho opened to $1.08 million on 1,206 screens. Smaller debuts also made the chart: Bitter Christmas took $37,000 on four screens.

These figures are studio estimates for the weekend, and the official actuals usually arrive on the Monday. Estimates can move a little once the final tallies are in.

Why does a move from a handful of cinemas to 27 matter? Each new screen is a booking decision. The distributor has to agree to widen the release, and cinema owners have to choose to show the film in place of something else. For a debut feature with a young crowd, that choice can decide how far word of mouth travels beyond the first cities.

Box-office weekends like this one also show how varied the calendar has become. A large release can sit beside a film on four screens, and both can be reported in the same chart. Each of these numbers is the result of a set of decisions by the people who made, sold and booked the films.