Hadestown Musical Opens to $9.7M as Indies Crack Top Ten
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- Hadestown: The Musical (Bleecker Street/Crosswalk with LD Entertainment) opened to $9.7M on 1,949 screens, the second-biggest opening for a live show capture since Hamilton, with the distributor expanding its initial five-day run and adding new dates and showtimes due to extraordinary demand
- Hadestown holds a 99% audience score and is Certified Fresh; the stage production won eight 2019 Tony Awards including Best Musical (written by Anaïs Mitchell, directed by Rachel Chavkin) plus the 2020 Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, while the film version was captured from the West End production under director Brett Sullivan with the original principal cast
- Motor City (Independent Film Company), a 1970s Detroit-set revenge drama directed by Potsy Ponciroli and starring Alan Ritchson, debuted at no. 9 with $1.6M across 1,600 theaters
- Five indie titles landed in the domestic top ten this weekend: The Invite (no. 6), Young Washington (no. 8), Obsession (no. 10), alongside Motor City and Hadestown's footprint
- Neon opened Nicolas Winding Refn's Her Private Hell to $530K on 675 screens and platformed Hirokazu Koreeda's Sheep In The Box at roughly $33K from three screens
- Crosswalk's prior release was concert documentary Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience, with George Michael: The Faith Tour scheduled as its next release later this year
Why it matters: A $9.7M opening on 1,949 screens establishes Crosswalk — Bleecker Street's new event cinema label — as a viable theatrical distributor for stage-to-screen captures, with the Hadestown expansion signaling immediate sell-through pressure; concurrently, five indies landing in the domestic top ten alongside the major studio slate marks an unusually strong weekend for specialty exhibition.
