Year in Review: 50 Biggest Documentary Hits
Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 3:00PM Our year in review party begins. A different list each day. Here's Glenn Dunks...
The documentary box office of 2018 was always going to be hard to beat - impossible, even. Last year we had five documentaries reach totals greater than $10mil. This year, unfortunately, we had none, although one of those five, Peter Jackson's colorized war doc They Shall Not Grow Old made the bulk of its money in the new year so there's that, as did Oscar winner Free Solo.
Nevertheless, the realm of non-fiction more or less thrived in cinemas across America. Where indie flicks with big names faultered, sputtered and got chewed up by the markets divergance towards streaming, documentaries continued to post solid numbers for their boutique distributors. The clear winner for 2019 was Apollo 11, which capitalized on the 50th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon as well as being marketed as an event movie in IMAX. It missed an Oscar nomination, but as last year's snubs for Won't You Be My Neighbour and Three Identical Strangers suggest, box office doesn't always make that a done deal.
Still, we are here to talk box office so let's look at the list.
TOP 50 GROSSING DOCUMENTARIES FOR 2019
Domestic Box Office Totals Only - Figures as of March 12th, 2020
RANK | TITLE | (DISTRIBUTOR, RELEASE DATE) | DOMESTIC GROSS
01 Apollo 11 (Neon, March 1st) $9.0 [REVIEW]
02 Penguins (Disney, April 17th) $7.6...
03 Pavarotti (CBS Films, June 7th) $4.6
Directed by Ron Howard. Daughter Bryce Dallas' doc Dads is going direct-to-Apple+ so there won't be a family box office clash.
04 Amazing Grace (Neon, April 5th) $4.4 [REVIEW]
05 Biggest Little Farm (Neon, May 10th) $4.3 [REVIEW]
06 Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (Greenwich, Sept 6th) $4.2 [REVIEW]
07 Echo in the Canyon (Greenwich, May 24th) $3.3
08 Maiden (Sony Pictures Classics, June 28th) $3.1 [REVIEW]
09 Fantastic Fungi (Area 23, Sept 20th) $1.7
Look, it lives up the name is all I will say. What a trip that this doc about mushrooms has made a million bucks! And from an opening weekend in September of just over $9k. A real word-of-mouth hit with audiences. And it's still making money; this past weekend it reached its highest spot on the box office chart at its widest release so far.
10 Western Stars (Warner Bros, Oct 25th) $1.5
11 No Safe Spaces (Atlas Distribution, Oct 25th) $1.2
12 Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (Roadside, July 5th) $1.0
Just Under the $1 Million Mark
(Performed well given the marketplace)
13 Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (Magnolia, June 21st) $903k
14 Honeyland (Neon, July 26th) $815k [REVIEW | OSCAR NOMINEE INTERNATIONAL | OSCAR NOMINEE DOCUMENTARY]
As we predicted it became the first film ever to be nominated in both Best Documentary and Best International Feature. While we have all been discussing the various successes (Parasite) and disappointments (Clemency) of NEON's 2019 slate, we probably haven't given enough due to the fact that a North Macedonian documentary about impoverished beekeepers made as much as it did and became a double nominee.
15 David Crosby: Remember My Name (SPC, July 19th) $732k
16 Where's My Roy Cohn? (Sony Pictures Classics, Sept 20th) $703k
17 Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins (Magnolia, Aug 30th) $694k [REVIEW]
18 Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Abramorama, Aug 23rd) $614k [REVIEW]
19 Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable (ENTMP, July 12th) $590k
20 Fiddler: Miracle of Miracles (Roadside Attractions, Aug 23rd) $549k [REVIEW]
21 The Spy Behind Home Plate (Ciesla Foundation, May 24th) $519k
Under $500,000
(They didn't quite cross over into ticket sales / larger public awareness)
22 The Russian Five (Lucky Hat, March 21st) $485k [REVIEW]
23 63 Up (BritBox, Nov 27th) $483k
24 Hail, Satan? (Magnolia, April 17th) $424k [REVIEW | JOHN WATERS TOP TEN]
25 Aquarela (Sony Pictures Classics, Aug 16th) $300k
This nature doc from Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky (best known for ¡Vivan las antípodas!) was somewhat surprisingly one of the 15 titles on the Academy's short list and we will be reviewing it in the coming weeks.
26 Ask Dr Ruth (Magnolia, May 3rd) $294k [REVIEW]
27 Mike Wallace is Here (Magnolia, July 26th) $281k
28 One Child Nation (Amazon, Aug 9th) $270k [REVIEW]
29 Meeting Gorbachev (1091 Media, May 3rd) $251k [REVIEW]
30 Hesburgh (Music Box Films, April 26th) $204k
31 The River and the Wall (Gravitas Ventures, May 3rd) $183k [REVIEW]
32 Iyengar (Kino Lorber, April 12th) $176k
33 Nureyev: Lifting the Curtain (CineLife, April 19th) $165k
34 Varda by Agnes (Janus Films) $159k
35 Halston (Orchard, May 24th) $151k [REVIEW]
36 Framing John Delorean (IFC Films, June 7th) $145k
37 Who Will Write Our History (Abramorama, Jan 18th) $138k
38 Jay Myself (Oscilloscope, July 31st) $135k
39 Paris is Burning (Janus Films, RERELEASE 1990) $125k [REVIEW | HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT]
39 The Kingmaker (Greenwich Entertainment, Nov 8th) $122k [REVIEW]
40 A Tuba to Cuba (Blue Fox, February 15th) $121k
42 Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (Zeitgeist, April 19th) $115k [REVIEW]
43 The Brink (Magnolia, March 28th) $106k
44 Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Magnolia, Aug 16th) $104k [REVIEW]
45 Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Kino Lorber, Sept 19th) $104k
46 Citizen K (Greenwich Ent, Nov 22nd) $103k
47 Walking on Water (Kino Lorber, May 17th) $102k
Under $100,000
Few people saw them but it's tough out there to grab attention
48 A Bigger Splash (Metrograph, RERELEASE 1973) $91k [REVIEW]
49 Loopers: The Caddie's Long Walk (Gravitas Ventures, June 7th) $90k
50 Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (PBS, May 24th) $84k
51 5B (Verizon Media/RYOT, June 14th) $72k
I unfortunately never got the chance the cover this one, but I would definitely recommend this film about the opening of America's first AIDS wing of a hospital in San Francisco in the 1980s. I might have suggested a better, more evocative title to help it out a bit. Often a sidebar or a diversion in other documentaries, in Dan Krauss and (yes) Paul Haggis' touching doc we learn so much more about the people who patrolled those halls and fought for equality in the most personal of ways.
They made under $70k despite some media attention. We covered them here at TFE!
- The Silence of Others (Argo, May 8th) $67k [OSCAR FINALIST 2018]
- The Queen (Kino Lorber, RERELEASE 1968) $47k [REVIEW]
- Making Waves The Art of Cinematic Sound $53k [REVIEW]
- Midnight Family $42k
- The Cave $62k [REVIEW]
- The Proposal $45 [REVIEW]
- For Sama (PBS) $43k [INTERVIEW / REVIEW] ... though a significant hit overseas
- Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (Zeitgeist Films) $55k [REVIEW]
- The Gospel of Eureka (Kino Lorber) $20k (February 8th) [REVIEW]
- Vision Portraits (Stimulus Pictures) $10k [REVIEW]
- What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire (KimStim) $4k [REVIEW]
Reader Comments (10)
Thanks Glenn!
Honeyland is so fitting for this fraught era. I hope a nomination brings more viewers into its embrace.
the performance of HONEYLAND really is amazing. But i am also often shocked by what documentaries do or dont make. It seems much more volatile than narrative features where you can at least anticipate a range solely based on which genre they belong to. Doc it seems like it's always a surprise. Like how did HALSTON make so little while MARIANNE AND LEONARD make so much etcetera.
Nathaniel - As a documentary fan who sees a fair number of these in the theater, I think it often comes down to a matter simple distribution, unless the film is a phenomenon like Apollo 11 or RBG. If Halston had played near me, I would have seen it (I did rent it when it was available). Marianne and Leonard played here in my mid-sized city for a week or two. The cutoff point for us is around the Miles Davis documentary, though we also got Dr. Ruth and Meeting Gorbachev.
There's also the fact that older audiences are more likely to see documentaries in cinema and the audiences go beyond metropolitan arthouses where rural cinemas are lacking for content for that demographic.
A film like Halston, too, will have a limited audience in many places and so they will likely play a festival rather than be released in a market. Or, what is common, is that they play in places for a week and that's it (out of sheer economic requirement).
You're missing THE INVISIBLES, a wonderful doc that opened in January.
Saw yesterday, Netflix 3 hours doc (sliced in 3 chapters miniseries) "Don't f**ck with cats: The Hunting of an Internet Killer" and it is just brilliant, amazing and fascinating in ways even Parasite can't reach. It could be a contender for Doc of the year, if Netflix would have released it as a film, in theaters. Ultrarecommended, and do not research or even look at the trailer. Just watch the damn thing and let yourself go into Pandora's box.
Jesus, I have not had much luck with Netflix's doc series but I've heard a lot about this one that has me intrigued...
Documentaries are boring. They make me think!
Professionals offer to hone your creative writing skills to improve them and elevate them to a high level through simple actions like writing the short spans and breaks you get throughout the day.