Huge weekend at doc box office; Mr. Rogers film big and 'Whitney' opens strong

Nonfiction films are enjoying their best collective theatrical performance in years

The documentary box office has sprung to life in a major way this summer after years of relative quiescence. 

The boom continued over the weekend with Morgan Neville's Won't You Be My Neighbor? earning another $2.6 mil., according to audience tracker comScore. The documentary about children's television personality Fred Rogers finished in first place once again, pushing its total to $12,362,937 after five weeks of release.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? also surpassed the box office total of the summer's other major hit, RBG. The film about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made $357,808 over the weekend, putting its cume at $12,302,369, comScore reported.
​

I think what you see with Won't You Be My Neighbor? or RBG is that there's a kind of hunger for movies that are not popcorn movies but that make us feel good about who we are as human beings.

--Rachel Dretzin, director of the upcoming documentary Far From the Tree

This weekend also marked the theatrical debut of Whitney, Kevin Macdonald's documentary about the late Whitney Houston. Its performance -- $1,274,051 -- augurs well for a continued hot streak for nonfiction titles in the coming weeks.

The highest per screen total of the weekend belonged to Three Identical Strangers, Tim Wardle's unlikely tale of triplets who were separated shortly after birth and only reunited by chance as adults. It made $13,427 on 51 screens, which works out to a robust total of $684,773. That was enough to push the film's cume to over $1 mil. after just two weeks of release.

The triplets at the center of Tim Wardle's documentary "Three Identical Strangers." Photo courtesy Neon Films

---

Related:
>Won't You Be My Neighbor? director on Fred Rogers' message: 'I can't find a better advocate for kindness and civility
>Three Identical Strangers director on deeper themes beneath strange story: 'Questions about free will, destiny, nature versus nurture'

---

Fourth place went to the aforementioned RBG, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen. Both RBG and Won't You Be My Neighbor? are close to breaking into the top 20 of highest-grossing documentaries films of all time.

"Look at all these films that are doing so well, these docs. It's like the summer of documentaries," exclaimed Rachel Dretzin, director of the documentary Far From the Tree which opens July 20. She offered an explanation for why nonfiction films are seeing a sudden resurgence in the theatrical space.

"I think what you see with Won't You Be My Neighbor? or RBG is that there's a kind of hunger for movies that are not popcorn movies but that make us feel good about who we are as human beings and connected to each other and that represents some of the values we feel are under assault in this country," she told Nonfictionfilm.com. "What we see is that there's a real market for films like this as an antidote to everything else that's happening."

In recent years it has mostly been IMAX documentaries that have found major box office success. The latest of the them, Pandas, finished in fifth place over the weekend. It has now made more than $2.7 mil. in 14 weeks of release.

The top five documentaries at the box office for the weekend of July 6-8, as reported by comScore:

1. Won't You Be My Neighbor? [Focus Features], directed by Morgan Neville
2. Whitney [Miramax Films], directed by Kevin Macdonald
3. Three Identical Strangers [Neon], directed by Tim Wardle
4. RBG [Magnolia Pictures], directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen
5. Pandas [Warner Bros.], directed by David Douglas and Drew Fellman