Seven screens. $393,357. A per-screen average of $56,194.
Those numbers for The Invite — Olivia Wilde's film, acquired by A24 out of Sundance in what IndieWire described as an aggressive bidding war against Annapurna — are worth sitting with for a moment. Not because they're record-breaking, but because of what they reveal about where A24 is placing its bets and how.
The Comparison That Actually Matters
A24 has been moving toward wider releases more consistently in recent years, so a platform opening is notable on its own. IndieWire's specialized chart puts The Invite in useful context: it came close to The Moment (Charli XCX, $427K on 4 screens, nearly double the per-screen average) and tracked above Mother Mary, which averaged $33K from 5 screens and ran only five weeks. The high watermark for A24 platform openings remains Marty Supreme, which pulled $863K from six screens. The Invite isn't there — but it's well above the floor.
What's interesting is the Letterboxd signal running alongside the box office one. The community's mid-year top 25 — films with at least 15,000 ratings by June 30 — already includes The Invite at #4, sitting above Blue Heron and Leviticus, two films this newsletter has tracked closely. That kind of audience enthusiasm, registering before a wide release, is exactly what A24 is reading when it decides how fast to expand.
The platform strategy here is essentially a controlled pressure test: does the per-screen average hold, or does it crater when you add screens? Pillion opened at just above $60K per screen and never expanded beyond 369 screens, finishing at a solid $3.8 million. That's the model The Invite is probably chasing — not a blockbuster, but a film that earns its expansion rather than being pushed into it.
Meanwhile, Maddie's Secret and Rose of Nevada are each adding screens in week two, and Carla Simón's Romeria — her Cannes drama from last year — just entered the specialized chart at #6 with $15,193.