A lot of movies have decided to move their premieres or shift to digital because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not for The Wretched, which decided to push through with screening the film. Because of the closure of cinemas in the US since March, the film was screened in drive-ins, an outdoor cinema where guests watch movies in their cars.
The move has been so successful that according to Box Office Mojo, The Wretched has been the #1 film in the US for three weeks.
It’s easy to attribute this rise to lack of competition, but the movie has also seen an increase in the number of drive in theaters screening the movie.
The Wretched follows a teenager as he discovers that his father’s next door neighbor is an evil witch. It has a 73% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the review, “[it] stirs up a savory blend of witch-in-the-woods horror ingredients that should leave genre fans hungry for a second helping from writer-directors Brett and Drew T. Pierce.”
It was initially planned to have it released in 15 theaters and go to video on demand. But then the pandemic happened. Drew Pierce told Entertainment Weekly, “every week, IFC (the movie’s distributors) would be like, ‘We’ve got these couple more drive-ins that are open, that are safe and willing to play it.”
It started out playing in 12 drive-in theaters. Drew added, “and then each week they kept on adding more drive-ins and the movie kept getting more people there.” It was expanded to 45 theaters.
The Wretched went on to gross $350,000 (roughly P17.7 million). It’s not a great number for a Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s good enough for an independent movie that came out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s no word when or how it will be screened in the Philippines, but we’re curious to see it!
What do you think? Share your thoughts below!
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