A Separation,” which saw its box office revenues almost triple last weekend, the first weekend after the movie bagged the Oscar for best foreign language film.
According to Box Office Mojo, a website that tracks film revenues, “Separation” took in $1,002,000 last week in the United States, bringing its box office total in the US to $3,727,000 in the 10 weeks since its release.
For last weekend, “Separation” was the 18th highest grossing film being screened commercially in the United States at this time.
That gross was 174 percent higher than the previous weekend. Sony Pictures, the movie’s distributor, helped boost that take by tripling the number of theaters showing the film. Anticipating the Oscar award, Sony had lined up new theaters for the week after the awards ceremony going from 83 screens the previous weekend to 243 screens this last weekend.
None of the other Oscar winners saw such a jump in revenues—but most of the others had received huge publicity long ago when they were released. Foreign language films are different—and an Iranian film differs even more. The Oscar publicity brought the film to the attention of millions of Americans who had never heard of it before.
While the film has received stupendous reviews all across the United States, the Oscar award gave an added fillip that no review can convey.