Peralta and Derbez
Photo: Adelina J. Ortiz
Instructions Not Included had a phenomenal first weekend in a tiny number of theaters, doubled the number of theaters in its second week, and is still expanding, to almost a thousand screens, in its third week. And Eugenio Derbez is making the most of it, in a series of interviews and appearances promoting the film. He’s been a big star in Mexico for years, but now–finally–he’s being notice in the U.S. as well.
This recent and all-too-short interview on Jimmy Fallon is just one example of how “You Genius The Best” and “South Dakota” are making a great impression with English language media, and it gives us a new clip of Instructions right in the middle. Take a look:
In its opening weekend, Instructions made a phenomenal $22,000 per screen–the equivalent of every chair in every theater filled at every showing. When the number of screens doubled, the per-screen average of more than $11,000 was still almost twice as high as the opening weekend for the next-best performer, Riddick, and five or six times better than the ‘normal’ per-screen averages of most other films in the top ten. That amounts to gross earnings of more than $20 million for what has been (slightly) marketed as a “foreign language” film, and shown in just a handful of theaters compared even to normal ‘art house’ releases. And it keeps growing.
Congrats to Eugenio, and if you haven’t already seen Se Fija!’s interview with him and his amazing costar Loreto Peralta, watch the interview here…and enjoy (they’re so cute!)
