Doc Corner: Final Oscar Predictions – A Big Year For Box Office Hits?

Editor's Note: We're turning over the final nomination predictions in Documentary to our resident doc expert. Take it away, Glenn -- Nathaniel R

By Glenn Dunks

It’s always somewhat impossible to gauge just what direction the documentary branch will go in. In the past, they have often been criticized for ignoring big non-fiction hits while the next year they're equally criticized for just nominating the documentaries that people have heard of and ignoring the smaller titles that haven’t the benefit of famous subjects or popular themes (WWII, for instance).

2019 was an unusually spectacular year at the box office for documentaries with four titles all reaching seven figures at the cash registers of cinemas in the US. It has been great to see documentaries enter the zeitgeist in such a way. Unfortunately that has meant that most awards organizations have defaulted to a standard list of those top four box office champs: Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Free Solo, RBG and Three Identical Strangers. Maybe with Netflix’s Shirkers or Hulu’s Minding the Gap thrown in for good measure. Will Oscar follow suit?

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Top 30 Documentary Hits of 2018

Each day a different year in review topic. Here's Glenn Dunks...

Documentaries had one of their biggest years on record in 2018. In fact, the upper realms of non-fiction at the North American box office started to look like what the foreign-language charts once looked like. There was at least one major cross-over smash, several very impressive eight-figure grossers, a selection of not insignificant titles that did over one-million, and a long list of niche titles that did business anywhere from respectable to disappointing depending on expectations and release size. The year even started strong for docs with 2017 hits Bombshell the Hedy Lamarr Story and Faces/Places continuing to earn tidy sums buoyed by word of mouth and an Oscar nomination respectively.

My column Doc Corner will continue in 2019 so here’s hoping the new year offers just as bountiful a crop. It's been good to see documentaries reaching the mainstream, zeitgeist conversation.

TOP 30 DOCUMENTARIES FOR 2018
Domestic Box Office Grosses Only - Figures as of February 17th, 2019. 🔺 = the film is still in theaters

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What did you see this weekend? And who wins next weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office Estimates (July 13th-15th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
Hotel Transylvania 3	Three Identical Strangers
1.🔺 HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3 $44.1 *NEW*	1. 🔺 THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS $1.1 on 170 screens (cum. $2.5) REVIEW
2. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP $28.8 (cum. $132.8)	2. 🔺 LEAVE NO TRACE  $1.1 on 311 screens (cum. $2.1) TRAILER DISCUSSION
3.🔺 SKYSCRAPER $25 *NEW*	3.  WHITNEY $535k on 408 screens (cum. $2.3)
4. INCREDIBLES 2 $16.2 (cum. $535.8)	4.  SANJU $500k on 223 screens (cum. $7.1)
5. JURASSIC WORLD FALLEN KINGDOM $15.5 (cum. $363.2) REVIEW	5. 🔺 EIGHTH GRADE $252 k on 4 screens *NEW *

Hotel Transylvania 3 had a strong opening weekend but Skyscraper, the other big new release not so much. I do personally wonder if Dwayne Johnson is a bit oversaturated in the market. This is his third action film to open in theaters within a seven months stretch beginning with Jumanji (a massive hit) on Dec 20th than Rampage on April 13th (which didn't quite hit $100 million domestically) and now Skyscraper on July 13th which opened weaker than Rampage. Maybe three movies of a similar genre from any star in a six month period is a bad idea... 

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Doc Corner: 'Three Identical Strangers'

by Glenn Dunks

“Truth is stranger than fiction”, nudge, wink, geddit? It’s fairly common that that old chestnut of a phrase makes its way into writings about documentaries as more and more filmakers uncover strange but true stories that then make their way into cinemas and onto streaming services. Crazy! Amazing! Insane! Shook! Whatever. Sometimes it's justified (Hi Tickled!) and then there’s Three Identical Strangers. A film that would almost certainly be a farce if invented in the mind of a screenwriter. There’s no way such a story could play as straight drama. It’s just too nutty. It is crazy and amazing and insane and I was shook.

Three Identical Strangers starts the way somebody telling this story might. Have you heard of the one of three brothers, identical triplets, who were separated at birth? That's where we begin...

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