Aussie noir Swerve opens quietly as Prometheus tops box office with $6.8m
A new Australian film in limited release has opened quietly across just 16 screens.
Billed as Australian noir, Swerve had its world premiere at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival and opened the Australian Film Festival in March.
Directed by Craig Lahiff and produced by Helen Leake the film took $24,487 at the box office for a $1,530 screen average.
The original strategy to be released in the USA through Cohen Media Group before Australia. In February Leake told Encore: “Our Australian market is so tricky I thought why not start overseas and bring it back home. We have to balance this tightrope really well and break through the little film syndrome.”
Set in the dusty country town of Neverest, around a suitcase full of cash, Swerve stars Jason Clarke, Emma Booth, Vince Colosimo, David Lyons and Roy Billing.
In a wide release of 467 screens, Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film Prometheus took top honours as the highest grossing film of the week with $6.775m for a screen average of $14,508.
Sydney VFX company Fuel delivered 200 shots for the sci-fi film as one of the three lead VFX outlets, working on the Orrey, the three-dimensional map of the universe.
Friends with Kids, written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt who also acts in the film, took $0.479m across 150 screens for $3,199 screen average. The cast also includes Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd, all from Bridesmaids as well as Westfeldt’s husband, Mad Man Jon Hamm.
In its seventh week, The Avengers passed the $50m mark by taking another $1.282m. The action film now sits as $51m and the fourth highest grossing film of all time at the Australian box office.
In limited release, Le Chef, dircted by Daniel Cohen and starring Jean Reno topped the week with 0.104m across 30 screens for a screen average of $3,470.
Distributor Sharmill’s screening of the National Theatre’s Frankenstein took $56,718 across just the one screen while Anton Chekhov’s The Duel, directed by Dover Koshashvili for Rialto took $30,974 across 32 screens for an average of $1,736.
Indian film Shanghai, directed by Dibakar Banerjee and distributed by Mindblowing Films took $31,977 in its first week across 13 screens for an average of $2,460.
Swerve is unlikely to get a theatrical release in the US, despite what the article says above. The theatrical market in North America is absolutely swamped with studio films and local indies. Even solid films like Animal Kingdom have struggled to get any screens, with mediocre results. I think Swerve will probably get a small VOD & DVD release in the States (which is still good).
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Aussie films don’t advertise or do PR enough. I never even heard of Animal Kingdom until about a year after it was released.
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