It isn’t every movie that can get people lining up around the block to get their heads shaved just for an early peek, but a gambit like that is just the ticket for a film like Yorgos Lanthimos‘ *Bugonia*. At least, to make this kind of movie-going into an event.
And if you’re Focus Features and it’s your first time working with Lanthimos after several films with Searchlight and A24, why wouldn’t you go all out? Adult, arthouse films with other big-name directors and stars—not all of them as fun as *Bugonia*—have been inconsistent at the box office. With no guarantee that people will show up, Focus needed to pull out the stops to make *Bugonia* feel like a true indie event.
Through two weekends, with the film expanding into over 2,000 screens in its second weekend, *Bugonia* has now made $4.8 million this weekend and $5.8 million to date. With another $5 million earned internationally, the film is at $11 million worldwide. Its domestic total has already surpassed the overall domestic run of Lanthimos’ last film, 2024’s *Kinds of Kindness*.
What’s more, *Bugonia* has earned Lanthimos’ best opening upon going wider—even outperforming *Poor Things* and *The Favourite*. That said, those movies didn’t immediately jump to as many screens in Week 2 as *Bugonia* has now, so there isn’t a perfect apples-to-apples comparison here.
On Rotten Tomatoes, *Bugonia* boasts an audience score that’s even slightly above *Poor Things*. However, *Bugonia* had a CinemaScore of B compared to an A- for *Poor Things*. The hope is that we could be talking about *Bugonia* for a while, with the film hanging around in theaters for months through awards season.
It’s exactly that second or third theatrical life that *Bugonia* needs in order to match how *Poor Things* ultimately became a long-tail hit. Both that film and *The Favourite*—according to data from Comscore—made just over $34 million domestic by the time their runs were done. Each opened late in the year and then lingered well into March.
Their international hauls, especially for *Poor Things* (which made over 70 percent of its $117 million worldwide total abroad), really made the difference.
Focus took the approach of capitalizing on *Bugonia*’s fall festival buzz as soon as possible. The film opened on 17 screens in its first weekend—a wider release than usual for a platform release of this kind. Those added screens allowed Focus to hold 35mm screenings with 13 different prints, including in Chicago, Boston, and Nashville.
That buzz helped propel the film into this past weekend, where the three 35mm screens in New York all managed to rank among the film’s top 10 performing locations, while the rest were all in the top 50.
One other film that could be a good touchstone—though not nearly as bonkers or bloody as *Bugonia*—is Focus’ own *Conclave* from last year. It too opened in a similar late-October window and went wide to about $6.6 million domestic. Focus kept it going strong for about a month, then scaled back during the holiday doldrums before ramping things up again in January as the film picked up awards buzz.
*Conclave* made nearly 90 percent of its domestic haul in that first month of wide release but stayed in theaters for another three months, finishing with $32.5 million.
Through two weeks, the distributor is already seeing strong repeat business on *Bugonia*, thanks to its cathartic ending and cultural parallels that should keep audiences thinking and coming back. Just in time for you to shave your head all over again.
https://www.indiewire.com/news/box-office/bugonia-yorgos-lanthimos-box-office-analysis-1235158571/