It’s a busy specialty weekend with fewer new studio releases. Well-reviewed Depression-era western The Weight starring Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe in wide release joins comedic doc The History of Concrete by John Wilson in an exclusive engagement. GKids opens Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom and Johnny Knoxville stars in R-rated Tiny Fugitives. From TIFF come Angelina Jolie’s drama Without Blood and doc You Had to Be There (full title below), about how a 1972 Toronto production of the musical Godspell changed the comedy world.
The Weight from Vertical opens in wide release on 1,504 screens. Director Padraic McKinley’s feature film debut stars Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe. Certified Fresh at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, it premiered at Sundance, see Deadline review. Opened the Deauville Film Festival this month, with Hawke receiving the Deauville Talent Award celebrating exceptional artists in cinema.
Referenced as harkening back to classics such as William Friedkin’s Sorcerer and John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Weight is set in 1933 Oregon as Samuel Murphy (Hawke) is torn from his daughter and sent to a brutal work camp. Warden Clancy (Crowe) tempts him with early release if he smuggles gold through deadly wilderness, but betrayal festers within the crew, and Murphy questions how far he’ll go to see his child again.
Preview events this week included an AMC Dolby Cinema Early Access screening program at 200+ theaters and an Alamo Drafthouse simulcast screening across the chain’s markets followed by a live Q&A with Hawke, co-star Julia Jones and McKinley from the Brooklyn location.
Magnolia Pictures drops Sundance-premiering The History of Concrete by the host of HBO series How To with John Wilson at the IFC Center in New York. The comedic documentary is loosely structured around and inspired by cement, the world’s most widely used building material and the bedrock of Wilson’s beloved New York City. He bounces from Rome to check out the Pantheon, built in 126 AD (the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome), to a concrete convention in Vegas, with long digressions into Hallmark moviemaking, tattoo taxidermy and New York’s underground music scene — interspersed with musings on his career path and Zoom meetings with perplexed potential investors in the project.
Wilson’s HBO series ran for three seasons from 2020-23. The History of Concrete sits at 100% RT score (off 41 reviews). Based on presales, it’s looking like the best opening for a documentary in IFC’s 21-year history, per Magnolia. The distributor went heavy on the NYC premiere Wednesday with a concrete truck wrapped in the film’s title treatment parked outside the theater, and a 125-pound poster made entirely from concrete in the lobby. Expands to 20 markets including Los Angeles next week.
Greenwich Entertainment is out with You Had To Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution, Spread Love & Overalls, and Created a Community That Changed the World (In a Canadian Kind of Way) by Nick Davis at Film Forum in NYC. Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Jayne Eastwood and others reminisce about the 1972 Toronto production of the musical Godspell, where Short, Levy, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Paul Shaffer and other entertainment icons got their start. Premiered at TIFF. See Deadline review. Executive produced by Judd Apatow. Adds L.A. and other markets next week.
Without Blood from Brainstorm Media, directed by Angelina Jolie and starring Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, opens on 350 screens. Jolie also produced and penned the screenplay based on the book by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco. A young woman seeks a reckoning decades after surviving the brutal murder of her family during a wartime conflict. Premiered at TIFF, see Deadline review.
Moderate/wide: GKids is releasing StudioCanal and Aardman production Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom on 2,173 screens. The film is currently Certified Fresh at 98% on RT. Official synopsis: The residents of Mossy Bottom Farm are looking forward to Halloween – until the clumsy Farmer trashes the Flock’s beloved pumpkin patch. When Shaun turns mad scientist to fix the problem, things rapidly spiral out of control… With The Farmer missing and a wild beast roaming the woods of Mossingham, all the ingredients are in place for a monstrously fun family adventure.
Indie distributor Inaugural Entertainment opens the raunchy R-rated comedy Tiny Fugitives, starring Johnny Knoxville, in about 300 theaters. Co-written and directed by Michael Lewen, it follows a reckless, fiercely determined group of 12-year-olds who hatch a chaotic plot to escape reality and spend the rest of their lives at sleepaway camp. Standing between them and permanent freedom is Bob (Knoxville), the camp’s deranged, relentless, 50-year-old lifer counselor. With Aaron Harris (Matlock), Isa Bernal Steiner, Jai Soundar, Alyssa Gervasi, with Blake Anderson (Workaholics) and Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon).
Sundance-premiering The Musical by Giselle Bonilla, written by Alexander Heller and starring Will Brill (Tony winner for Stereophonic ), Gillian Jacobs and Rob Lowe (who also produces), is out on 250 screens. Convinced he’s a big fish stuck in a small pond, bitter playwright Doug Leibowitz has been marking time as a theater teacher until he can get to New York. But when he finds his ex has been dating the person he hates most in the world, the school principal, his plans shift to secretly staging the most inappropriate play possible at the middle school. Unapologetic Partners, Blue Harbor Entertainment and Variance Films are partnering on the release.
Live-action biblical drama Daniel and the Fiery Furnace from EKKL Entertainment arrives on 1,493 screens this weekend. Written and directed by Matthew and Daniel Kooman, it’s the origin story of the prophet Daniel against the backdrop of exile in Babylon.
Limited: Watermelon Pictures opens Traces of Home by Colette Ghunim at the Angelika in NYC. The doc follows the filmmaker on a journey of self-discovery as she sets out to reunite her parents with the ancestral homes they were forced to flee as children in Palestine and Mexico. Filmed over five years and featuring animation and archival footage. Executive produced by Melissa Barrera and John Leguizamo. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in U.S. Competition at DOC NYC last November and Best Documentary Feature at San Diego Latino Film Festival. Expands to Laemmle Royal and Laemmle Glendale in L.A. next week.
As Alex Gibney’s Musk makes headlines, the Oscar-winning documentarian has another film out this weekend — Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie opens in 18 theaters via Abramorama. Featuring the writer and his wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths and inspired by Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, it explores his recovery from a 2022 attack at a speaking engagement where was stabbed 15 times. With personal footage that has never been seen by the public, the doc follows the writer on his physical and spiritual recovery.
Quiver Distribution debuts Berlin-premiering coming-of-age drama Sunny Dancer on about 20 screens. A group of teenagers finds friendship at a summer camp for cancer survivors. Stars Bella Ramsey, Neil Patrick Harris, James Norton and Jessica Gunning with a score by Este Haim.
Fourth Act Film opens SXSW-premiering documentary First They Came for My College, directed and produced by Patrick Bresnan about a right-wing takeover of liberal arts school the New College of Florida orchestrated by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. World premiered at True/False and screened at DC/DOX, IFF Boston, SFFILM and the Florida Film Festival, where it won the Feature Documentary Audience Award. Starts at the Hippodrome in Gainesville, FL, and rolls out to about 30 markets, hitting DCTV in New York City on Sept. 25.