'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl' is a potential Oscar winner.
Though the movie world was distracted by the box-office monster Jurassic World this weekend, a promising new release was making its own headway. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was a massive Sundance favourite and opened to a respectable $210,000 from just fifteen theaters.
Thomas Mann stars in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
"We felt the film was strong enough to go in the summer," said Frank Rodriguez, senior vice president of distribution at Searchlight. "There was no indication ['Jurassic World'] would do $200 million, and that kind of sucked up all the air, but there was still space for us and we got the press and reviews we needed."
More: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl wins both major prizes at Sundance Film Festival
Me and Earl is a tearjerker about a high school cinephile who befriends a cancer-stricken classmate. Its numbers at the box-office are reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite, which opened modestly in 2004 before sleeping its way to $44.5 million worldwide.
At Sundance, the movie was the subject of an intense bidding war and for a short time it looked close to breaking the record for the most expensive festival acquisition. In the end it went to Fox Searchlight for $6 million and a share of the profits.
More: Sundance: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in ferocious bidding war
"The Citizen Kane of teen cancer tearjerkers, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's funny and bruising Sundance sensation is like The Fault in Our Stars remade for Criterion Collection fetishists," said David Ehrlich of Time Out.
"This Sundance winner is something special indeed, a movie featuring teens that can't be classified as a TEEN MOVIE. It's a masterful funny/sad and illuminating human story," said Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood Daily.
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