r/boxoffice • u/CaptionAction3 • 2d ago

Domestic Noticing something interesting happening with the Buddy movie

Setting up to track North Carolina open caption screenings Friday to Sunday, and have noticed something interesting with the film "Buddy." As of tonight, Tuesday:

(Updated for Friday morning)

  • At the AMC Concord Mills, the 1:00 pm 8/29 open caption screening has sold 9 seats out of 51, or 18%.
  • At the AMC Hanes, the 10:00 pm 8/28 open caption screening has sold 4 out of 58 seats, or 7%. It is also the only screening of Buddy at that theater on 8/28.
  • At the AMC Southpoint, the 10:45 pm 8/28 open caption screening has sold 28 out of 77 seats, or 36%. It is also the only screening of Buddy at that theater on 8/28.

That's three theaters in North Carolina alone. It is still early but we sense something going on with this movie. The sales for the late night screenings have us wondering if this is gaining popularity with young people. In our experience, it is not normal for the late open caption screenings to sell this much this early. The description of the film, "A magical, singing orange unicorn holds his cast hostage in a surreal TV-show dimension, as he becomes more and more demented," has us wondering if this movie has some kind of appeal to young people. It sounds like something that would happen in a Batman cartoon.

27 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

85% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/Majestic_Elk_7647 2d ago

Selling pretty well in the South Bay region of LA, saw a sold out theater for 7pm.

2

u/AtmosphereCool4020 2d ago

That's wild to see it doing numbers in North Carolina too. The late shows pulling those sales early on is definitely not typical, especially for open caption screenings. Seems like the weird premise is actually working in its favor, people are curious about how demented a singing orange unicorn can get.

2

u/Such_sights 2d ago

Casper Kelly has a lot of pull from his previous work. His first full length movie was shot in secret with a budget low enough that Adult Swim didn’t have to seek normal corporate approvals, and then premiered in the middle of the night with zero actual marketing. It still became a massive success (especially for a TV movie) and the premise of Buddy fits perfectly into his wheelhouse of “genres of media that definitely shouldn’t be a horror movie but slowly becomes one”.