When we spoke with Bob Odenkirk ahead of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the star of “Normal” was clear about his ambitions to continue making more action movies with “John Wick” writer Derek Kolstad. Even though there’s still an audience for a generic beat-em-up movie, he said, he’s interested in doing something deeper.
“There’s a cookie cutter action type story you can tell and it will satisfy an audience, I understand that. I grasp that there’s an audience out there, and I don’t want to name names, but I don’t need to because you can conjure them up without effort,” Odenkirk previously told IndieWire. “There is a kind of movie that if you make it and it looks reliably satisfying, it will get its audience. But I’m always trying to find something more, find something more to the form, smuggle in something more than just the accepted values of that genre.”
Trying to go beyond the genre norms may have proved a challenge for his new film “Normal,” which Magnolia opened this weekend to a modest $2.65 million domestic, seventh place for the weekend.
Magnolia took “Normal” wider than any film it has released in its existence, opening on just over 2,000 screens. Odenkirk and company had even been talking sequel. It’s being positioned like a more traditional commercial action movie with that big of a push, and with an estimated per-screen-average of just $1,286, it’s possible audiences didn’t quite see it that way.
The number of screens it committed to emphasizes the strength Magnolia saw in “Normal.” In many cases, booking as many screens as you can is merely a function of them being available. Even with tentpoles like “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Project Hail Mary” still going strong, there’s not necessarily enough product to go around (the other major new opening was “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy”), so theaters will gladly book something like “Normal.”
But without a platform build-up for a movie like this to establish some word of mouth, shooting your shot by going as wide as possible in Weekend 1 doesn’t necessarily bode well for it to sustain long term.
IndieWire, though, understands that Magnolia is happy with the outcome, and the distributor never saw “Normal” as a specialized film. Odenkirk proved he could open an action film with two “Nobody” movies, the latter of which in 2025 made $43.2 million worldwide, so it would be short changing “Normal” to open on significantly fewer screens than that franchise. In fact, the distributor had been aligned with Odenkirk and Kolstad since TIFF about how wide they wanted “Normal” to open, and the good news is even with “Michael” opening next weekend, “Normal” figures to maintain nearly all of its screen count for Weekend 2.
It’s not too far from where we see most wider-release indies falling of late, and Magnolia’s own “Thelma” from 2024 is exactly the template Magnolia is looking at with “Normal.” Considering that film was a sleeper hit and Magnolia’s biggest narrative film ever, it would be a solid outcome. “Thelma” opened slightly below “Normal,” to about $2.3 million, but it also did so on over 700 fewer screens and managed a per-screen-average of $1,785. It then ultimately made $9 million domestic and $13 million worldwide, and it did so with above-average holds week-over-week, even as it lost theaters.
“Thelma” was an original, fun, indie summer crowdpleaser, and though Odenkirk is a few decades June Squibb’s junior, both films fit into the offbeat action mold that surely informed how Magnolia wished to roll out “Normal.” All of it is part of a reinvention of itself to more commercial fare that could play in the theater.
The difference is that “Normal” received a major marketing push that exceeded “Thelma,” as did the acquisition cost, and in fact among the biggest P&A spend for the distributor ever, IndieWire understands. Odenkirk toured the film as part of a roadshow to SXSW, his hometown of Chicago, and even the real-life Normal, IL. The distributor also did a marketing campaign featuring QR codes that let you vote for “Bob for Sheriff,” and there’s even an upcoming USO show with the film later this week.
And unlike “Thelma,” “Normal” is also an R-rated, very violent property that premiered in Midnight Madness at TIFF and perhaps doesn’t have the same wide appeal. Audiences for “Normal” were largely male and over 35, but the film didn’t overperform or underperform in any particular market nationwide that suggests it wasn’t well-positioned. Though “Nobody” is a viable comp, “Normal” is a darker, more serious film than that franchise and may not have had the exact same wide reach.
Still to come, Magnolia has three other festival favorites in John Early’s “Maddie’s Secret,” Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex,” and John Wilson’s “The History of Concrete.” All three are more genre-bending titles that, like “Normal,” Magnolia hopes to turn into commercial hits. For “I Want Your Sex,” the expectation is that it will open on potentially half as many screens as “Normal,” and it will do so opposite “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
Still, recreating the success of something like “Thelma”? Easier said than done.
Source:
www.indiewire.com
