‚Relic‘ earned $282,000 in 69 drive-in theaters in advance of its July 10 VOD release, Rod Laurie’s war actioner ‚The Outpost‘ topped iTunes and ‚Hamilton‘ ruled Disney+.
This isn’t quite a conventional box office report, but it will have to do. Since we aren’t talking about either the intended release of Minions: The Rise of Gru (pushed to next July) or even Russell Crowe’s Unhinged (pushed to July 31,2020), the closest thing to a notable opening weekend for the holiday frame is the $282,000 domestic debut in 69 drive-in theaters (nice?) for IFC’s Relic. Natalie Erika James’s well-reviewed haunted house movie, written by James White and Christian White and starring Robyn Nevin, Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcoate, is by default the biggest opening weekend we’ve had at least since at least April.
Presuming we count whatever Trolls World Tour unofficially earned in limited theatrical release on the weekend of April 10 (concurrently with its PVOD launch), the Relic is the biggest opening weekend for a new movie in almost three months. But if we count movies that actually reported box office totals, then Relic is the biggest opening since the weekend of March 13, when The Hunt ($5.3 million), Bloodshot ($9.2 million) and I Still Believe ($9.1 million) gave us what for now was the last weekend of conventional nationwide theatrical moviegoing. Becky’s $205,957 opening weekend (which placed second to The Wretched’s sixth frame) in early June is no longer summer’s biggest opening weekend.
What’s interesting is that it’s not available to rent or buy online at the moment. The film will expand to available conventional theaters and VOD on July 10, but for the moment it’s only playing in the aforementioned drive-ins. Whether that contributed to the (comparatively) high opening weekend I can only speculate, but it obviously didn’t hurt. I have not seen the film yet, but I have seen the terrific 1997 Peter Hyams-directed The Relic that is currently streaming for free on Amazon
AMZN.
