Olivia Colman's 'Wicker' Is on Track to Become Black Bear's Biggest-Ever Domestic Release

The strangest hit of the autumn keeps getting bigger. 'Wicker', the Olivia Colman fable that Black Bear picked up out of Sundance, is now on track to become the distributor's biggest-ever domestic release, after a second weekend that broke every rule of the modern box office.

Released on 23 October, 'Wicker' opened to $5.7 million from 1,471 theatres across North America — a healthy start for an independent title, but not the stuff of records. What has changed the story is not the opening. It is what happened next.

On its second Friday, 30 October, the film grossed $1.4 million — down just 39.6 per cent on its opening Friday. Based on Box Office Mojo figures reported consistently across outlets, that makes it the strongest second Friday in Black Bear's history: the kind of gentle decline normally reserved for word-of-mouth phenomena, not for a small fable released in late October.

The hold carried the film's domestic total to around $10.6 million, with the second weekend projected to land between $3.5 and $4.5 million. Exhibitors have responded the way they always respond to a film that refuses to fade: the release has been expanded from 1,471 theatres to 2,374, putting 'Wicker' in front of audiences who never had the chance to find it in week one.

All of which puts a specific number in the film's sights. Black Bear's current domestic benchmark is 'Shelter', the Jason Statham action film, which finished with $12.8 million. On its current trajectory, 'Wicker' is projected to pass that figure and take the company's all-time domestic record. To be clear about the framing: this is an industry projection, not an accomplished fact — the film still has money to earn before the record changes hands. But nobody tracking the numbers is now doubting the direction of travel.

The economics behind the run are the stuff of independent-film dreams. As TheWrap reported, Black Bear acquired the North American rights out of the Sundance Film Festival for $2.5 million. A domestic gross already past $10 million, against an acquisition price of that size, is exactly the bet every independent distributor hopes to place: the right film, at the right price, finding the audience the bigger players walked past.

Some of the fascination is the premise itself, which sounds like a dare. Colman plays a fisherwoman who, wanting a husband, commissions the local basketmaker — played by Peter Dinklage — to weave her one. Part fable, part comedy and part something harder to categorise, the film is directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, and it has turned its own oddness into its marketing: audiences are going precisely because they cannot quite believe the film exists.

The per-theatre maths underlines how unusual the run is. An opening of $5.7 million from 1,471 theatres works out at roughly $3,900 per location — solid rather than spectacular. Films that start there usually drift downwards as newer releases take their screens. 'Wicker' has done the opposite, converting a modest opening into momentum: a 39.6 per cent second-Friday dip, a growing theatre count and a total already within sight of the company record inside a fortnight. That is not the profile of a front-loaded release. It is the profile of a film audiences are discovering in real time and then recruiting for.

The cast around the central pair signals the ambition. Alexander Skarsgard, Elizabeth Debicki and Richard E. Grant join Colman and Dinklage — the kind of ensemble that gets a film noticed at a festival, and, as this run is proving, keeps audiences curious long after the first reviews have done their work.

The clearest sign that 'Wicker' has crossed from release into phenomenon came from its premium screenings. As TheWrap reported, 4DX scheduled the film for a one-day-only screening — and, after sellouts driven by demand on social media, expanded it into a full one-week run through 4 November. One-day events do not get extended by accident. They get extended when audiences start treating a screening as an occasion.

In an era when most films collect the bulk of their money in the first ten days, a second-Friday drop under 40 per cent is a statement: audiences are recommending this film to each other faster than it can shed screens. It is the same legs-first pattern powering the autumn's other surprise performers, from the 'Ghosts' film that topped the UK chart to Tom Cruise's 'Digger' — proof that in a crowded season, the films that hold are beating the films that merely open.

There is a pleasing transatlantic footnote to all of it. 'Wicker' is powered by one of Britain's most decorated actors — Colman, an Academy Award winner long past the point of needing to prove anything — anchoring an American independent release so effectively that she is rewriting her distributor's record book. British stars have carried the American box office before, but rarely with a film this peculiar, or this proudly handmade.

The tests now arrive in sequence. First, whether the second weekend lands inside its projected $3.5 to $4.5 million range. Then, whether the expanded theatre count holds into week three. If 'Wicker' keeps declining this gently, the question about the 'Shelter' record stops being if — and becomes simply which week it falls.