Daniel Day-Lewis’ fashion drama “Phantom Thread” has performed impressively in its platform release with a projected $616,000 at four locations in its first eight days.
“Phantom Thread,” which opened Christmas Day, grossed $305,000 over the four-day Friday-Monday New Year’s holiday weekend with a per-screen average of $76,259. Focus Features plans to add two more screens on Jan. 5 and expand to more markets on Jan. 12.
The awards contender is expected to be Day-Lewis’ final film. The movie — set in 1950s post-war London — follows Day-Lewis’ character, a renowned dressmaker at the center of British fashion. His life is disrupted by a strong-willed woman, played by Vicky Krieps, who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover.
“Phantom Thread” earned Paul Thomas Anderson the National Board of Review’s best screenplay award and Day-Lewis a Golden Globe nomination. It marks director Anderson’s eighth movie, and his second collaboration with Day-Lewis. They teamed on 2007’s “There Will Be Blood,” for which the star won his second of three best actor Oscars.
“Phantom Thread” is showing at the ArcLight Hollywood and Landmark in Los Angeles, and at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square and Regal Union Square in New York City. It debuted three days after Steven Spielberg’s “The Post,” which finished its second weekend with $765,000 at nine sites for Friday-Monday for an impressive $85,000 per-location average. The Fox title has taken in $2 million in its first 11 days of release.
“The Post,” starring Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, will ygo wide on Jan. 12. The National Board of Review named it the best film of 2017, with Hanks and Streep taking the top acting awards. The film also received six Golden Globe nominations.
Sony Classics’ “Call Me by Your Name,” which posted the best average for a three-day limited opening of 2017 during the Nov. 24 to Nov. 26 weekend, made $702,098 on 115 screens for Friday-Sunday and has totaled $4.6 million in six weeks.
But Sony Classics saw only moderate results for its debut of Annette Bening’s “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” with $36,048 from four screens in the final release of 2017. Bening portrays Gloria Grahame in a story based on the memoir by Peter Turner, who’s portrayed by Jamie Bell.
STXfilms’ first weekend of Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” finished with a solid $3.1 million at 271 locations. The film, which opened on Christmas Day, has a projected $6 million total in its first eight days. It’s directed by Aaron Sorkin, based on Molly Bloom’s memoir “Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker.”