‘Club Kid,’ ‘I Play Rocky’ Shine in Limited Release at Busy Specialty Box Office

While “Godzilla Minus Zero” roared triumphantly atop the box office, a pair of new films in limited release lit up the specialty side of the theatrical marketplace: A24’s dramedy “Club Kid” and Amazon MGM’s Sylvester Stallone biopic “I Play Rocky.” And that’s just the beginning, as offerings ranging from live concert films to documentaries about the Golden Age of Hollywood were all finding an audience this weekend.“Club Kid” was released on six screens and earned a strong $390,583 for a per theater average of just over $65,000. Directed by debut feature filmmaker Jordan Firstman and premiering at Cannes earlier this year, the film stars Firstman as Peter, a washed-up party promoter who finds out that he has a 10-year-old son named Arlo, played by Reggie Absolom. Forced to take care of Arlo, Peter is left to balance taking care of his smart-alecky new ward while trying to move forward in a New York party scene that is passing him by. With a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, “Club Kid” will steadily roll out over the next few weeks ahead of a nationwide Thanksgiving expansion. “I Play Rocky” will take a similar path, albeit with a nationwide expansion on Nov. 20 ahead of Thanksgiving. On seven screens, the Peter Farrelly biopic grossed $345,000 for a per theater average of $49,200. The film stars Anthony Ippolito and tells the story of the making of “Rocky” and how Stallone, through conviction and work ethic, convinced producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff to let him play Rocky Balboa instead of handing off the role he wrote to an A-List actor. The film, of course, turned Stallone into an A-Lister himself and became the highest grossing film of 1976 as well as a Best Picture Oscar winner. Amazon MGM played “I Play Rocky” for movie theater execs at the Cinema United fall meetings last month to enormous praise, and critics have hailed Ippolito’s performance as the film has received an 88% Rotten Tomatoes score. Farther up the charts, Trafalgar Releasing made $3.7 million from “Stray Kids: Run It,” a live broadcast of the K-Pop band’s performance from the Tokyo Dome on 917 screens. That wasn’t the only alternative offering in theaters as Regal also screened the first two episodes of HBO Max’s “Heated Rivalry” in 947 theaters, grossing $1.4 million. Just ahead of “Heated Rivalry” was Fathom’s “Jimmy,” a biopic about legendary Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart starring K.J. Apa that made $1.5 million from 2,901 locations. But the biggest result from a non-major studio was for Angel’s “Drummer Boy,” the musical drama from Luke and Joel Smallbone, the musicians and filmmakers best known as the Christian pop duo King + Country. The film starring Joel Smallbone as a Revolutionary War drummer boy cracked the No. 3 spot on the weekend charts with a $9.3 million opening while music from the film reached the top of Apple’s iTunes charts. “It has been eight long years of failure and triumph to bring ‘Drummer Boy’ to the screen,” said Joel Smallbone in a statement. “To us, this is a story of our own experiences portrayed—a story of ending up on the opposite side of life’s battle-lines, and of forgiveness and freedom and true love. This is a film that’s deeply personal to us. So as you’d imagine I find myself deeply impacted by the fact that this personal story has found its way into hundreds of thousands of your hearts,” The specialty box office was busy on the holdover side too. Netflix’s “La Bola Negra” expanded to 473 locations and added $975,000, bringing the Spanish queer drama’s total to just shy of $2.5 million. Sony Pictures Classics’ “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” is approaching $4 million in grosses after adding $892,000 in its third weekend. Finally, A24’s “You Can See Everything” continues to hold incredibly well as it is set to cross the $80 million domestic mark on its fourth Monday in theaters. The film is on pace to pass the $96 million total of “Marty Supreme” to become A24’s second highest grossing film in its history behind only “Backrooms.”