SamboraBlog

Now, the real test for Gore's 'Truth'

Al Gore will now find out whether his movie fans are a renewable resource.
The critically acclaimed if controversial documentary An Inconvenient Truth that Gore narrates opened May 24 to a stunning $70,332-per-screen average in four theaters. But last weekend, in 404 theaters, that average was down to a strong but not as passionate $4,732 per screen. Distributor Paramount Classics is testing how far Truth can go.

Today, the movie arrives in 100 more theaters in 40 cities. So far, the film has taken in $7.3 million.

That's small by Da Vinci Code standards, but it's huge for the art-house circuit it has played in up till now.

Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com calls the film a sleeper hit that he predicts will continue strongly as it expands into theaters.

Pandya says the audience for the movie skews older, and adult ticket-buyers don't always rush out to a film on opening weekend.

Brandon Gray of BoxOfficeMojo.com says Truth could "could double what it has" by the end of summer and cross into the top five documentaries of all time, surpassing Super Size Me, Mad Hot Ballroom and Winged Migration.

"It's by no means a smash," Gray says of Truth's numbers now. "But it's a solidly performing documentary."

Feature documentaries are a notoriously hard sell — none harder than one starring a former politician discussing a doomsday topic. Only two have become smash hits: Michael Moore's George W. Bush-skewering Fahrenheit 9/11, which took in $119.2 million in 2004, and last summer's cuddly March of the Penguins ($77 million.)

Few documentaries make more than a couple of million dollars in theaters before moving on to DVD and television. And most show only on about 200 or so screens. Truth already is the 10th-highest-grossing documentary of all time.

As it moves into the suburbs and middle-of-the-country territory, the marketing push surges on.

Gore will be on the Late Show with David Letterman tonight and appears on The Daily Show and The View next week. On Saturday, Gore will introduce a free concert by Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora before an outdoor screening of his movie in Los Angeles.

In Salt Lake City, the movie is playing in three theaters. "These movies sometimes preach to the choir, but this film seems to be reaching beyond that because it's not divisive," says Tori Baker, executive director of Salt Lake Film Society, which runs the Broadway Center Theatre in downtown.

She said last weekend, it took in more than $9,000 at her theater, which now plans to hold Truth for five to six weeks. "I would not have guessed this would be the breakout summer documentary."