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Source: Deadline
To call the most recent weekend at the box office an interesting might be considered by some to be something of an understatement. For one thing, two films are currently vying for the #1 spot, with Warner Brothers’ music biopic “Elvis”, which first went into general release this weekend, and Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick”, currently in its fifth week of release, competing against each other with a weekend gross of around $30.5 million. Regardless of whichever film comes out on top, the latter will still have plenty of reason to celebrate, as it just recently became the first film of 2022 to receive a worldwide gross of $1 billion. On the other hand, Disney and Pixar’s “Lightyear”, which had first come out last weekend, did not have as much to celebrate, as it followed an underwhelming opening weekend with a drop of 65% in ticket sales, far more than desired by those who were hoping the film would have strong legs in the coming weeks.
As one can clearly see, there’s a lot going on with the biggest films currently in theaters, but that doesn’t mean the smaller films should be ignored. After all, sometimes the films that seem to have the smallest impact at the box office are those that go on to have the biggest cultural impact in the long run. This can already be observed in the sleeper success of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (which still remains in the box office Top 10 since its release fourteen weeks ago), and another film distributed by A24 that has just come out could very go on to achieve a similar feat, that being the live-action/stop-motion hybrid mockumentary “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.”
Directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp, who co-wrote the script with Nick Paley and Jenny Slate (who also stars as the titular character), the film and its characters have had quite an interesting history when it comes to getting onto the big screen. Based on a series of short films that were originally uploaded to YouTube in 2010, the shorts’ main lead, a one-inch shell with a single googly eye, shoes on his feet, and a mind of his own, made his theatrical debut last year when the feature-length film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September 2021 (while also being shown at SXSW last March). Produced by Cinereach and a variety of other small production companies, “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” received a distribution deal with A24 in November of last year, and just recently began its release in theaters, opening in select venues throughout New York City and Los Angeles on Friday, June 24th. Although its current theater count is small (at the moment, it is currently only playing in six theaters), what it has achieved so far at the box office could be a sign of much greater things to come.
Throughout the first three days of its release, “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” accumulated a total of just under $170,000 at the nationwide box office. This may not have been enough for the film to enter the Top 10 (instead premiering at #12 on the chart), but industry analysts are calling it a respectable opening nonetheless. The reason: with a per-screen average of around $28,267 per theater (as previously stated, only six theaters are currently showing the film, with many more to show it in the coming weeks), the film has the highest PSA of any film currently being seen in theaters. For comparison, both “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Elvis” had an average of around $7,800 per theater over the previous weekend, just over a quarter of what “Marcel” had received over the same period of time.
Given the extremely small number of theaters it’s currently playing at, it’s hard to call the performance of “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” anything less than impressive, but will it be able to build upon this initial success once it does go into wider release? To answer this question, it might be important to look back on “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, which opened in ten theaters during its first weekend to a total of $509,600 with a per-screen average of $50,965. “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” may have only earned a PSA just over half of that total, but it also opened in only six theaters, meaning that the film may have earned a much greater PSA had it been available to see in a slightly larger number of venues.
Still, if “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” is going to perform anywhere near as well as “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is still performing (at the moment, the film sits at #8 with a weekend gross of $533,346 and a total domestic gross of $66,088,446), it will need to have strong word of mouth from those who have seen the film. Fortunately, the film’s reception so far seems to be nothing short of overwhelmingly positive. Of the fifty-five reviews currently listed on Rotten Tomatoes, not one of them is negative, with “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” currently having a 100% approval rating with an average score of 8.4/10. This is not too far off from the 95% approval rating and 8.6/10 average score that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” currently has (though that film has far more reviews at the moment at a total of 317), and while it’s guaranteed to change once the film goes into wide release, the early reactions to “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” are far more encouraging than not.
Does this mean the film will be a surefire hit? It’s too early to say at the moment, especially since its rollout across the nation will be a gradual one. Next weekend will see the film enter six more major city markets – Austin, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. – before entering wide release the following weekend and steadily gaining venues throughout the summer. It may appear to be a slow approach to releasing the film, but this kind of strategy has proven effective for many independent features in the past, and there’s no reason to believe that it shouldn’t work for “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On”. Its premise of a talking seashell might be a bit unusual to some, but being unusual didn’t stop “Everything Everywhere All at Once” from succeeding in the long run, so it’s hard to come up with reasons as to why this film achieve something similar.
