Civil War is A24's biggest movie launch ever

Although film company A24 has built up a pretty remarkable reputation for itself over its 12 years of existence—winning 16 Oscars, including the sweep executed by Everything Everywhere All At Once last year—it’s still pretty niche, as far as money-making goes. (Even EEAAO only ended up clearing $144 million at the global box office, despite what could be roughly described as the maximum amount of word of mouth possible.) Now, though, the studio is set to have its biggest opening weekend since it, well, opened, with Deadline reporting that Alex Garland’s provocative new thriller Civil War will bring in at least $24 million, and possibly more, this weekend.

Again, this is kind of small-ball when compared to the blockbuster side of the Hollywood street, where “Big Monster Punches Other, Bigger Monster” film Godzilla X Kong is currently expected to hit a total of $157 million this weekend. But it’s extremely good for A24, whose previous opening was 2018's Hereditary, which opened at $13.5 million. And it’ll be enough to beat Godzilla and Kong for at least this particular weekend, since that film has been in theaters for two weeks at this point.

Civil War has garnered relatively strong reviews for its efforts to tell a story about the United States violently turning against itself, as well as performances from acting power couple Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons. (Although the negative criticism, including that aimed at Garland’s efforts to deliberately de-politicize and genericize the conflict depicted in the film, has been pointed.) Released in the run-up to a national election it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell ourselves is just some sort of awful mass hallucination, it’s clearly riding the zeitgeist in a way that’s helping A24 gain a bit more of a toehold in the American movie market.