Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite made history at the Oscars on Sunday, becoming the first international film to win Best Picture (it also won Best International film, naturally, as well as Best Director and Best Original Screenplay). Unfortunately, seeing as how it is an international film and those don’t generally play well to us dumb Americans, its initial theatrical rollout wasn’t especially huge, meaning it was much harder for the average moviegoer to see than, say, Joker. That’s going to change now, though, because The Hollywood Reporter says Parasite is dramatically expanding its theatrical footprint in the wake of those Oscar wins this weekend. THR says that Parasite, at its highest, was available at 1,060 theaters across the U.S., and now that’s going to increase to “as many as 2,000 or more locations.”
This expanded rollout will make it pretty easy for Parasite to top Pan’s Labyrinth as the fifth highest-grossing international film of all time, as its box office take currently sits at $35.5 million (Guillermo del Toro’s film stopped at $37.6 million). Parasite has been available on home video since January (do we still call it home video?), but THR says analysts think it could still get somewhere between $45 and $50 million. It already made $71 million in its home country of South Korea and broke a record in the U.K. for the highest opening ever for a non-English-language film.