No, we’re not quite ready to bring back Weekend Box Office, since there’s still no real box office to speak of and nobody knows how much these digital releases are making without someone releasing a controversial brag about it, but movies are still finding ways to make money. One such movie is teen horror romp The Wretched, Brett and Drew T. Pierce’s take on a supernatural Rear Window, which wisely decided to expand on its straight-to-VOD rollout with a run at drive-in theaters. Now, according to IFC (which distributed the movie), that gamble on an outdated venue for moviegoing has paid off, with The Wretched making $85,000 across 21 drive-in locations.
That’s not a ridiculous amount of money, but it’s also better than no money at all (which is what most movies are making at theaters these days). It’s also supposedly the most any movie has made at the drive-in box office this weekend, but that’s only according to IFC and also IFC is the only distributor reporting how much money it made… so all this means is that The Wretched made more money than How To Build A Girl (which is also an IFC movie and made $36,000 from nine drive-in locations). This almost certainly doesn’t foreshadow a dramatic shift in how people consume movies, like drive-ins will soon become the new norm, but considering that NBCUniversal boss Jeff Shell is comfortable with his movies never screening in an AMC theater again if it means being able to release more digitally, maybe the studios will try and brute force this into being the new norm. Nobody knows what life is going to be like on the other side of this pandemic. All we know is that IFC says it’s movie made more money than its other movie.