WAGD's Humble Box Office Weekend

We just wrapped our first theatrical weekend of We're All Gonna Die! Huge thanks to everyone who showed up, supported the film, and (perhaps forcefully) dragged others along for the ride.

When we set out to make WAGD, a theatrical release wasn’t even on the table. But three years, a SXSW premiere, and DIY roadshow later—we decided, why not give it a shot? We’re proud of this film, but more than that, we wanted to dive headfirst into the theatrical world, learn everything we could, and use those lessons for the PLANNED theatrical release of Nail House.

So what lessons did the cinema gods bestow on our naive theatrical souls this opening weekend?

1. What We Made (Sort of) and How It’s Tracked

Above, you'll see our Comscore report. Comscore is a media analytics company that tracks box office numbers—sites like Box Office Mojo pull their stats from it. Theaters report their ticket sales to Comscore, which then compiles the data.

Obviously the overall number here, $12,088, is not very large. But we are pretty happy with this weekend. Why? The key number for us is the per-theater average, which will comfortably sit above $1K per screen—right in the sweet spot for indie films like ours. Plus, not all our theaters have reported yet, so that number will climb.

What did we learn? If we wanted to hit WAGD's budget ($500K) on opening weekend, we’d need to land in about 500 theaters. But here’s the kicker—a movie our size doesn't have to make its budget back on opening weekend, which brings us to the next nugget of knowledge we... dug up in the mines of... independent cinema.

2. The Long Game Matters More Than Opening Weekend

Couple of quick facts about independent theaters: they don’t finalize bookings until the Monday of the same week, they receive hundreds of film submissions, and most aren’t eager to be the first to screen an untested movie. Above all, they hate empty seats. And empty seats happen—a lot. They are often contractually obligated to play a large studio movie, from say Disney, for X number of weeks. Even if after the first two weeks, the majority of their film-going audiences in their town have already seen it. Or they are contractually obligated to have a large horror movie playing in the morning on the weekday. No one is going to see it.

All of this comes together to give small films like ours a little bit of an opening.  We just have to be flexible, and willing to fit in wherever there are empty screens. And pray that an indie theater with five screens just happens to have one available on OPENING WEEKEND!

Once we let go of the “OPENING WEEKEND OR BUST” mindset, doors started opening. Many independent theaters hold open slots down the line, and the more confidence they have that they’ll sell even a few dozen tickets, the better.

So rather than chasing a massive opening, our focus shifted to getting into the right theaters first—ones where we knew we’d perform well. Success in those venues would make other theater owners more comfortable picking up the film.

The result? Some screens are closing after this first weekend, but we’ve already locked in even more for next weekend. In fact, we’ve got theaters lined up through April, May, and even June in certain cities.

(Also, remember—most of their profits come from concessions. A $1,000 week in ticket sales can easily turn into $3,000 when you factor in popcorn, soda, and those overpriced-but-irresistible peanut M&Ms.)

3. Your film needs an audience before it comes out.

Getting into those first few dozen screens would have been ten times harder if we didn’t have a fanbase built up from years on YouTube and, more recently, the Dungeons and Daddies podcast.

Want to know who plays the indie theater game like absolute pros? Filmmakers in the faith-based space. They leverage church groups for mass ticket pre-sales, which gives theaters instant confidence that their movie will make money.

Now, there is no independent filmmaker who runs an organized religion, and almost as few have a large built-in audience before their first feature comes out. That’s where we got really lucky—some theaters only took our calls once they saw we had a passionate fanbase ready to show up.

So if you emailed a theater asking them to screen WAGD, left a Letterboxd or Rotten Tomatoes review, or even just watched the trailer on YouTube—that mattered. A couple hundred thousand views on a trailer instantly separates us from countless other indie films at our budget level.

This pattern isn’t unique to us. Look at Mike Cheslik and Hundreds of Beavers, Benson & Moorhead’s decade-long indie grind, Andrew Bowser turning the Onyx the Fortuitous fanbase into a film audience, or Andrew Callaghan’s sold-out documentary screenings after years of building Channel 5.

So… What Does This Mean for Nail House?

We’re cautiously optimistic about Nail House’s theatrical chances next year. Once we have a first-pass budget, we’ll go into more detail. But the big takeaway? Because we know from the start that Nail House is destined for theaters, we can document the journey, grow an audience, and build excitement before it even comes out.

And maybe—just maybe—we can finally crack the code on making indie filmmaking sustainable, even at our (humble but still expensive) scale.

So all in all. This has been a very informative weekend for us, getting our feet wet in this theatrical world. As well as a very humbling and touching one as you fine folks went to see the film, and have said such kind things about it.

We will be sure to update over the next couple of months as we get a final box office number, and we have some exciting updates coming soon regarding Nail House as we start getting into set design.

Thanks!

Matt