Despite dropping more than 50% in its second week of release, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Picturehouse) outdrew all other specialty releases over the weekend, earning $21,200 per screen at five theaters, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Directed by Canadian indie veteran Patricia Rozema (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, When Night is Falling), Kit Kittredge has clearly benefited from a devoted fan base that convinced thousands of their parental units to fork over $20 per ticket -- which, to be fair, includes a limited-edition t-shirt -- to see the movie in advance of its wide release tomorrow. That's a very good performance when you consider its main competition was not, actually, a French-language flick that skewed very adult, but actually a heavily-advertised animated film.
Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress (IFC Films), starring Asia Argento, took in $17,600 per screen at two locations, which probably owes as much, if not more, to the name recognition of Argento as that of the often-confounding Breillat.
Trumbo (Samuel Goldwyn), a documentary about the life of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, did very nicely, scoring $9,500 per screen at three theaters, while Werner Herzog's personal essay on the Antarctic, Encounters at the End of the World (ThinkFilm), expanded to eight theaters and earned $6,762 per screen.
Mongol (Picturehouse) expanded to 209 locations, nearly doubling its theater count, and hit a very respectable per-screen average of $4,043. The film has earned $2.3 million to date.
