Secret Limited Releases

March 5, 2010

It's Oscar Weekend, which is just a horrible time to debut a limited release, as people who are more interested in seeing limited releases in theaters will also be interested to see what films will win Oscars. So it comes as no surprise there are so few films on this week's list.

Paan Singh Tomar - No Reviews
Based on the real life story of a champion runner who quit his sport to become a rebel. It's a foreign language import from India, and like most of these there are no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, nor is there much in the way of crossover appeal. We don't even have a theater count for the movie. Hopefully come Monday we will have box office numbers, but I'm not entirely confident that will happen.

The Secret of Kells - Reviews
Back in December I mentioned that a studio should pick up this movie and one of the other animated films that didn't have a theatrical release scheduled as a way of getting one of their established animated films an Oscar nomination. At the time, the number of animated films that had been released or had a set release date was right on the bubble that would raise the number of nominees for Best Feature-Length Animated Film from three to five. If I were running a studio, I would think it would be worth the relatively small amount of money to buy the rights to a film like this if it meant my film would earn an Oscar nomination it would not otherwise get. I never thought that this film would be the one to earn the Oscar nomination itself, but that's exactly what it did. The fact that it is opening the weekend the Oscars are being handed out is both excellent timing and devastating. I think a lot of people will want to check it out to see if it deserved the nomination, but come Sunday its box office could collapse, while the publicity will help it as it expands over the coming weeks. The Secret of Kells opens tonight at the IFC Center in New York City before expanding to Boston in two weeks and other cities at the beginning of next month.

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Filed under: Limited Releases, The Secret of Kells, Paan Singh Tomar