Wes Anderson's Use of Limited Distribution

It has been a few years since we have seen Wes Anderson’s name appear back on the big screen. His last movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, was released in 2009 and used very unique animation to retell Roald Dahl’s famous story. The last movie Anderson wrote and used real people in was Hotel Chevalier, which was released in 2007. For five years now, the public has wondered what will Wes Anderson’s next original film be and when will we see it? And to any true Wes Anderson fan; will Bill Murray be in it?

This year Anderson’s new movie, Moonrise Kingdom, hit select theaters around the country. It is the story of two young lovers who run away from their New England town, which causes a search party to go out looking for them. The movie has a star studded cast which includes but is not limited to; Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Kara Hayward, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel, and of course the one and only Bill Murray. Murray has appeared in 5 or Anderson’s last 6 films, which has indirectly turned him into an iconic piece of a true Wes Anderson film.

Moonrise Kingdom was the opening film in this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film teamed up with the indie distribution Focus Features who is owned by NBC and Comcast. Upon the film’s release on May 15^th, it was only shown in four theaters. Two theaters in New York and two theaters in Los Angeles were the only theaters in the country to release the film. According to Box Office Mojo, Moonrise Kingdom earned $167,250 per screen. For comparison, Men in Black 3 earned $16,478 per screen. Although overall numbers are much different, Focus Features states that Moonrise Kingdom’s box office was the highest per theater for a non-animated film of all time. Focus Features’ goal is to create as big of a buzz as they can for the film before it is released worldwide. Behold the powers of limited distribution!

The Film has also teamed with Swedish Distribution Company, NonStop Entertainment for the release across Scandinavia. NonStop Entertainment will own the rights to distribute in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, as well as Norway.