‘Everything, Everywhere’ Nears $40 Million As Its Oscar Odds Increase

Since A24 has only been releasing weekday numbers for Everything, Everywhere All At Once at the end of the week (Friday morning), I can only now tell you that the Michelle Yeoh multiverse action fantasy was the top movie on Wednesday, May 4. Yes, the film earned $707,736 on its 41st day of domestic theatrical release, while it earned $710,883 on Monday (+1.7% from last Monday) $837,250 (-2.5% from last Tuesday) and $494,552 (-32% from last Thursday). The discrepancy in the weekday holds implies that the indie darling took a hit from losing evening showings to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and it will drop this weekend from 2,213 theaters to 1,542 theaters on its fifth weekend of wide release (and eighth overall weekend of play).

Nonetheless, with $38.243 million domestic thus far, it should cross $40 million on Saturday and could be at $42 million by Sunday night. That will put it within spitting distance of Hereditary ($44 million in 2018) to become A24’s third-biggest domestic earner. And while the drop this weekend could be bigger than we’ve seen for the last few frames, it’s not like the next three weeks are packed to the gills with summer blockbusters. We’ve got Firestarter next weekend (which will also debut concurrently on Peacock) and Downton Abbey: A New Era on May 20 (which, to be fair, as the first Downton Abbey opened with $33 million, its sequel could be an event movie for older audiences) before Top Gun: Maverick and Bob’s Burgers: The Movie on Memorial Day weekend.

The Daniels’ Everything, Everywhere All At Once still has a shot at displacing Lady Bird ($49 million) and Uncut Gems ($50 million) as A24’s biggest unadjusted domestic earner. Even if it has to settle for bronze, it’s still almost certain to be A24’s biggest grossing movie of 2022. Maybe Alex Garland’s horror flick Men will soar to infinity and beyond when it opens on May 20, or maybe A24 has some other super-duper commercial offering between now and December. However, in all likelihood, this sleeper smash is going to end the year as A24’s most acclaimed and highest-grossing release for 2022. If that’s the case, then it goes from a potential “keep it in your back pocket” early-in-2022 Oscar contender to the leading such film from one of the industry’s most successful indie distributors.

A film this well-reviewed and well-received, from a gold-chasing distributor, is almost certain to end up among the ten Best Picture Oscar nominees and among the five nominated original screenplays. As Best Original/Adapted Screenplay is often viewed as a glorified consolation prize to the critical darling that loses Best Picture and/or a celebrated twisty-turny script (Get Out, Pulp Fiction, The Social Network, Lost In Translation, Promising Young Woman, The Usual Suspects, etc.), I’d put money on Everything, Everywhere All At Once winning Best Original Screenplay next year (probably Best Editing too at this juncture). I’d like to think Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan have a shot at nominations (meanwhile, James Hong is well overdue for an honory Oscar/lifetime achievement award), but now it’s a matter of how the actual awards season films fare.

That it has performed so well commercially means that it’s not just a matter of throwing a bone to an indie critical darling. It has already earned more than any Oscar season contender from last year save for Dune ($108 million) and House of Gucci ($52 million), and we can only hope that this year’s year-end contenders (Paramount’s Bablyon, Sony’s The Woman King, Universal’s The Fabelmans, 20th Century Studios’ Amsterdam, etc.) deliver critically and commercially. But if we get a repeat of last year, where most “Oscar movies” struggle to top $20 million, well, that’s not good overall but it would make this early-year indie one of the biggest-grossing contenders by default. Thanks to all of the above, plus a likely push from critics, it has gone from a longshot to a front runner.