Box Office: ‘The Wretched’ Tops $1 Million As Summer Remains Paused

When the multiplexes re-open and the blockbusters return, will The Wretched have a place alongside tentpoles like Tenet and Mulan?

In the closest thing we’ll have to box office news this weekend, IFC’s sleeper hit The Wretched has passed $1 million at the domestic box office. Since IFC is among the only studios actually reporting box office grosses on the regular, it again (by default) is the top movie of the weekend, becoming the first movie to top for six consecutive weekends since Avatar back in 2009/2010.

Whether or not Universal’s Trolls: World Tour (which is not officially reporting grosses) should actually be proclaimed the reigning champion since its limited release theatrical debut (concurrent with its PVOD release) on April 10, well, this is all just a battle over what movie gets into the trivia books with what entirely asterisk-filled milestone.

If Universal and DreamWorks’ Trolls: World Tour has been the real weekend box office champion, then this has been its ninth weekend on top. For reference, the other record holders, whether you count The Wretched or Trolls 2 as the current champion, are The Fugitive in 1993 and Rocky IV in 1985 at six weekends, Avatar, Porky’s, On Golden Pond at seven, Back to the Future and Fatal Attraction at eight, Good Morning Vietnam and Crocodile Dundee at nine, Home Alone at a dozen, Tootsie and Beverly Hills Cop at 13 and Titanic at 15 consecutive weekends at the top of the weekend box office.

Maybe Solstice Studio’s Unhinged can make at least enough when it opens on July 1 to end this madness once and for all. At the very least, IFC’s horror throwback has topped $1 million in raw domestic earnings after six weekends in theaters and without playing at more than 95 theaters.

The horror flick, written and directed by Brett Pierce and Drew T. Pierce, earned an estimated $162,000 this weekend after expanding from 75 theaters (including a large number of drive-in theaters). That’s a terrific 7.7% drop even with 20 additional theaters, and it brings the film’s cume to $1.08 million thus far. For an IFC Films offering, as most of their releases are arthouse fare that play in limited theatrical release and concurrent VOD availability (you can rent The Wretch for around $7 on various VOD platforms), that’s a pretty terrific result.

Ironically enough, in a summer without big summer movies, The Wretched, about a young kid sent to live with his father during a contentious divorce who discovers potential malfeasance in the small town neighborhood, approximates the old-school, IP-free summer movie on a prior time. You could actually say that about a lot of movies currently “in the marketplace.”

The likes of Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s Becky, starring Lulu Wilson as a young teen defending her family, Die Hard style, from invading Neo Nazis (led by an against-type Kevin James), represent both explicitly “drive-in” fare (it’s an unapologetic grindhouse actioner) and old-school studio programmers when movie stars and high concepts ruled. I have not yet seen Bella Thorne and Jake Manley’s “modern Bonnie and Clyde go viral” flick Infamous, but the Vertical release will play both on VOD and in drive-ins next weekend.

Ditto, relatively speaking, Saban’s ghoulishly funny Satan worshipping horror romp We Summon the Darkness and Neon’s “not quite a biography” Shirley Jackson flick Shirley (featuring another superb turn from Elizabeth Moss), which debuted on VOD and Hulu.That’s not counting the consistent deluge of glorified B movies from Netflix (think Oliver Megaton’s genuinely lousy The Last Days of American Crime) that are attempting to fill the gap.

Heck, even Russel Crowe’s road rage thriller Unhinged, allegedly the first national wide release theatrical offering since March 13, is seemingly an old-fashioned star vehicle/schlock offering. But I digress.

What might be worth watching is whether The Wretched, because that’s really the only “new” movie of this nature doing anything resembling boffo box office, further expands into multiplexes and related theaters as the domestic movie theater industry slowly re-opens over the next month. Will there be room for The Wretched, the little movie that could, alongside Unhinged, Tenet and Mulan when the multiplexes (allegedly) get back to blockbuster business?