What Happened To The January Expansion?

What do ZERO DARK THIRTY, AMERICAN SNIPER, THE REVENANT, HIDDEN FIGURES, THE POST, and 1917 have in common? Combined they have 39 Academy Award nominations. All six were nominated for Best Picture. But there’s a less obvious connection among these films. All six opened in limited release in late December before expanding wide the following January.

Sometimes referred to as a qualifying run, these films play in a handful of theaters in December to qualify for awards consideration. But rather than open wide against the onslaught of end-of-year holiday tentpoles, they wait until the box office quiets down in January before going wide. Along the way, these movies build buzz and word-of-mouth from critics and the select few who saw the film in its limited run.

It’s a tried and true model that has been around for decades. And it hasn’t been restricted to these big, award-recognized hits. Other films following this model include A MAN CALLED OTTO, JUST MERCY, PATRIOT’S DAY, and SELMA.

With the exception of OTTO, this distribution strategy has largely disappeared post-pandemic. This year, two films had been scheduled to expand wide from a limited December run, though both look to be in jeopardy. The plan has been to expand BETTER MAN this weekend, but after earning less than $5,000 per theater in its first two weeks of limited release, it’s hard to imagine the film getting a 2,000+ screen expansion.

The same is true for SEPTEMBER 5, which is scheduled to go wide on January 17. But despite rave reviews and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture, Drama, it has been a very soft performer at the box office after three weeks. A wide expansion also looks to be in jeopardy.

So, what’s going here? Why has the high-profile January expansion all but disappeared? Some say it’s because adult-skewing films don’t have the same theatrical audience as before the pandemic. Consider the case of NIGHTBITCH, one of the higher-profile releases of last year. Searchlight opened the film in a handful of theaters on December 6. The studio took the rare step of not releasing box office data, and three weeks later the film was available to watch on Hulu.

Some might say an expansion was never in the cards for NIGHTBITCH, given its tepid reviews. Still, this argument is undermined by the success of adult-skewing films like NOSFERATU, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN and THE BRUTALIST, which earned an impressive $67,000 per theater average, a feat made all the more remarkable given its 3 ½ hour run time.

There’s no apparent reason why the January expansion can’t still be a successful distribution model. One could argue that a film like THE FIRE INSIDE, could have flourished in January. It has made just over $5M through New Years Eve and is likely to fade fast. The film has terrific reviews but was never going to stand out among the other adult-skewing holiday films like NOSFERATU, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, and BABYGIRL. Waiting until mid-January when those films had cooled off, might have been the better movie.

Perhaps we are wrong. Maybe BETTER MAN and SEPTEMBER 5 will still get wide expansions this month. We hope that’s the case. We also hope that if they do, they find an audience that belies their soft limited runs.

The films that have successfully adopted this strategy in the past provided the January box office with a nice jolt. The absence of these films gets the year off on a down note. We know January will be soft this year mainly because we don’t have an AMERICAN SNIPER or HIDDEN FIGURES driving people to the box office.