The busiest weekend for indie film openings in weeks has a mix of wide and limited releases, narrative features and docs, genre, special engagements and festival fare from Berlin, Cannes and Venice (2025). The Odyssey has landed, and awards season is on the horizon.
Bleecker Street this frame presents Hadestown: The Musical, the live theater capture from its new event-cinema division Crosswalk and partner LD Entertainment. The West End production dances onto 1,948 screens in a special engagement that was meant to be five nights only with limited showtimes but has expanded due to demand with exhibitors adding screenings. The film, featuring the original principal cast of Reeve Carney, André de Shields, Amber Gray, Eva Noblezada and Patrick Page, premiered at Tribeca Festival this summer.
The distributor anticipates the second-highest opening weekend for a Broadway capture (bested only by Hamilton) after Thursday previews of $1.5 million. Presales have already eclipsed Waitress: The Musical, which Bleecker released in 2023.
The hit musical, written by Anaïs Mitchell and directed by Rachel Chavkin, won eight Tony Awards in 2019 including Best Musical, and the 2020 Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album with the five original principals of the Broadway company. It follows two intertwining love stories — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and of King Hades and his wife Persephone
The film version is directed by Brett Sullivan.
Bleecker’s Crosswalk label saw a $5.5 million opening for Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience earlier this year. George Michael: The Faith Tour later arrives later this year.
Independent Film Company is wide on 1,600 screens with Motor City, the buzzy Venice and Toronto crime-revenge thriller starring Alan Ritchson, Shailene Woodley, Pablo Schreiber and Ben Foster. Directed by Potsy Ponciroli from a screenplay by Chad St. John, it’s set in 1970s Detroit where a working-class romantic is framed by a ruthless gangster after falling for his girlfriend. After years in prison, he returns with only one mission: revenge.
Neon has a double header this weekend. Her Private Hell, directed and produced by Nicolas Winding Refn, opens at 670 locations. Starring Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton and Havana Rose Liu. Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives, The Neon Demon) co-wrote alongside Esti Giordani. The psychological thriller premiered at Cannes, Deadline review here.
Synopsis: When a mysterious mist engulfs a futuristic metropolis, unleashing a deadly and elusive entity, a troubled young woman searches for her father. Her quest collides with an American GI on a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell.
The film recently opened the 30th edition of Fantasia Film Festival, where Refn was honored with the Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award.
Also from Neon is Hirokazu Koreeda’s Cannes-premiering sci-fi drama Sheep in the Box at IFC Center and Lincoln Square in NYC and AMC Century in LA. In the not-so-distant future, a grieving couple who have lost their son takes a humanoid into their lives with the same face and voice as their late child. Stars Daigo, newcomer Kuwaki Rimu and Haruka Ayase. Also premiered at Cannes; see Deadline review.
Comedy-horror Haunted Heist, the directorial debut of Lil Rel Howery (Get Out) debuts on 373 screens from Variance Films. Four estranged friends (Tiffany Haddish, Andrew “King Bach” Bachelor, Karlous Miller, Rel Howery) reunite at a creepy Airbnb. One of them is planning to rob the house and needs help tracking down the valuables inside. Trouble is, the place is haunted by racist ghosts (Stranger Things’ Brett Gelman and Ari Dayan) with dark motives of their own. Shot partly in the historic Detroit mansion once owned by Motown founder Berry Gordy.
Mubi’s black comedy Rosebush Pruning by Karim Aïnouz, written by Efthimis Filippou, opens at the Angelika Film Center in NYC. Stars Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Lukas Gage, Elena Anaya, Tracy Letts, Elle Fanning and Pamela Anderson.
Synopsis: Under the Catalonian sun, a rich white American family lives in hedonistic isolation, seeking love and validation through one another, their designer wardrobes and pop music. When an outsider infiltrates the family, buried tensions surface and blood ties are severed. Premiered at Berlin; see Deadline review.
Expands to Los Angeles next week and across major markets in August.
Watermelon Pictures debuts drama A Sad and Beautiful World by Cyril Aris at the Quad in NYC. Lebanon’s 2026 Beirut-set Oscar submission premiered in Venice parallel section Giornate degli Autori where it won the People’s Choice Award.
Synopsis: Across three decades of passion, loss, and hope, Nino and Yasmina are bound by a magnetic relationship. Torn between love and survival, they must decide whether to build a family and seek happiness in Lebanon or leave their home amid the country’s unfolding tragedies. Stars Mounia Akl and Hasan Askil.
Adds L.A.’s Laemmle Royal, Santa Barbara SBIFF Film Center, Chicago at Uprising Theatre and the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington NY, next week with additional markets to follow.
TIFF-premiering documentary A Life illuminated by Fourth Act Film, on trailblazing marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder, opens at the DCTV Firehouse for a weeklong run. Written and directed by Tasha Van Zandt (The Gun Chronicles: A Story of America, One Thousand Stories: The Making of A Mural, Tehachapi, The Chronicles of Miami, After Antarctica).
Widder was one of the first women in her field and one of the first people to explore the ocean’s twilight zone, descending to 3,300 feet. She captured the first-ever footage of the elusive giant squid and unveiled the mysteries of deep-sea bioluminescence. The doc follows her quest to document a bioluminescent phenomenon that could change how we understand life on Earth. (Some of Widder’s undersea footage was used in the 2022 TV special Jaws vs. Kraken.)
Adds the Laemmle Glendale and Laemmle Santa Monica Film Center in L.A. next weekend.
Lorena Alvarado’s Venezuelan debut features, drama Lost Chapters (Los capítulos perdidos), debuts at New York’s IFC Center via Several Futures. World premiered at FID Marseille with additional berths at Munich and Locarno, Goteborg and a North American premiere at New Directors/New Films. Lost Chapters follows Ena, who returns home to Caracas after years spent living abroad, to find herself caught between two generationally shifting worlds.
Viva Pictures is out with slasher horror Pinocchio Unstrung in 500 theaters nationwide. The R-rated reimagining by Rhys Frake-Waterfield starring Robert Englund and Richard Brake is the latest installment of the director’s Twisted Childhood Universe, a series of dark retellings of classic characters from children’s literature. The pic posted $60,000 at 385 locations from Thursday preview screenings.
Synopsis: Pinocchio Unstrung unfolds inside an elite London prep school. Influenced by a sinister Cricket (Englund) and created by Geppetto (Brake), Pinocchio launches a violent crusade to carve himself into a real boy like his brother James, one piece at a time.
Definitely not Viva Kids fare but the distributor is offering theaters its usual split-screen option, allowing them to adjust days and showtimes.
Frake-Waterfield created the TCU (ha ha) as a horror film franchise that turns public-domain children’s stories into slasher films. Previous releases include Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 and Bambi: The Reckoning.