“La Bola Negra,” a sprawling historical epic that is viewed as a major Oscar contender, opened in limited release this weekend. The film‘s grosses were strong, with “La Bola Negra” earning $277,500 from just four venues in New York and Los Angeles, for a per-screen average of $69,375. It’s the second-highest per-screen average for a Non-English language film of all time. But more importantly the film also makes history, becoming the first Netflix release to ever publicly disclose box office grosses.
That marks a shift in strategy for the streamer, which has released films in theaters exclusively for several weeks to qualify for Oscars, but has been dodgy about the money they’re actually making. It briefly pulled back the curtain on the results for “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” but never officially. But it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day for Netflix, which will start to report box office results like the rest of its studio and streaming brethren.
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So get ready for headlines about how David Fincher’s “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,’ Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,” Taika Waititi’s animated feature “Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory,” Peter Berg’s “The Mosquito Bowl,” and Danny Boyle’s “Ink” fare when they open in theaters. All will have theatrical windows of roughly a month or more, which will give them access to more screens. But will Netflix enjoy the scrutiny? Apple sure seemed to hate it, discovering it was great to report box office when you had the goods (“F1”) and not so hot when you did not (“Fly Me to the Moon,” “Argylle”).
But Netflix has bigger problems at the moment. Its stock is in a rut and it has just enacted a punishing wave of layoffs, pink-slipping 1,000 employees and jettisoning Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria in favor of Fox and Disney vet Peter Rice. Will an embrace of traditional theatrical releases provide Netflix with an invaluable new source of revenue or will Wall Street treat box office grosses as another metric to pummel Ted Sarandos with when it finds them lacking?
So far, Netflix seems happy with the results. The streamer noted that “La Bola Negra’s” look at gay history appealed to younger audiences, the same ones driving the box office rebound. To that end, 51% of its opening weekend crowd was under the age of 35, with ticket buyers between 25 to 34 making up the largest age group at 39%.
“La Bola Negra,” which Netflix picked up at Cannes for around $5 million, may be important in another key way. Awards voters seem to be embracing it and there’s a chance that it could overcome “The Odyssey” to land Netflix the Best Picture Oscar it has long coveted. That kind of validation would be worth a lot more than whatever the historical epic earns at the box office.