Following its Venice Film Festival bow and seven César Awards including for Best Film, Lost Illusions was the top weekend title at two core NYC arthouses — taking $10,850 of its estimated $13,579 three-day gross from Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center. The period piece based on the Honoré de Balzac novel about greed
IFC Midnight
Chloe Okuno’s feature debut Watcher recorded the biggest opening weekend grosses ever for IFC Films and its IFC Midnight/Shudder label on 764 U.S. screens — also one of the distributor’s widest ever releases. The genre thriller that world premiered at Sundance then SXSW reported an estimated weekend gross of $815,000 and a PSA of $1,067.
The Innocents, set in a semi-deserted, nondescript high-rise apartment, follows four lonely kids who find each other as well as mind-bending powers one summer, to lethal effect. The horror pic launched at Cannes last year and arrived Stateside last weekend via IFC Midnight in a limited theatrical plus digital release after playing New Directors/New Films.