- Kevin Smith's "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot" is finding success at the box office.
- Smith and his costar Jason Mewes are embarking on a roadshow where they will be doing Q&As at the screenings.
- The first screening was last weekend on one screen in New Jersey and it brought in $93,520. That's the year's second-best per-screen average, only behind Neon's "Parasite" and beating Disney/Marvel's "Avengers: Endgame."
- Business Insider was provided the roadshow screenings for this week and "Reboot" brought in $339,998 on four screens. That's a per-screen average of $85,000.
- "Reboot" has a cumulative box-office take currently of $1.351 million.
- Smith told Business Insider the success is due to the decade-plus of doing live Q&As and podcasts about his old movies to feed his fanbase.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Whether you like Kevin Smith's movies or not, there's one thing you have to respect: he knows his brand.
The writer-director who climbed to stardom in the 1990s thanks to movies like "Clerks," "Mallrats," "Chasing Amy," and "Dogma" is proving with his latest movie, "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot," that he can still pack in the theaters. And it's all thanks to the fanbase he's forged over his 25-year career.
Last week, following two screening through Fathom Events that showed the movie on a combined 1,427 screens nationwide on Tuesday and Thursday, "Reboot" played Saturday and Sunday on one screen in Smith's home state of New Jersey to kick off a roadshow tour of the movie (in which Smith and his costar Jason Mewes do Q&As) and that brought in $93,520.
That's the second-best per-screen average of 2019, only behind Neon's "Parasite" ($128,000 on 3 screens). And it's better than A24's "The Farewell" ($88,915 on 4 screens) and Disney/Marvel's "Avengers: Endgame" ($76,601 on 4,662 screens).
Since then, the good times have kept rolling for Smith. Business Insider was provided the box-office stats for the first week "Reboot" has been on its roadshow and it's a huge success. On four screens, Smith has brought in $339,998. That's a per-screen average of $85,000.
The total box-office gross for "Reboot" to date is $1.351 million.
How in the world is Smith pulling this off? He has a dedicated fanbase that he's been entertaining with podcasts and live Q&As for over a decade.
"No one was lining up to finance a Jay and Silent Bob movie," Smith told Business Insider.
But then it dawned on him. People pay to see him live to talk about his old movies, so why not use the same model but show them a new one.
"If we didn't have the last ten years of doing podcasts on the road talking about the old movies, we don't have that model to bring to this movie," Smith said.
According to Smith, "Reboot" cost $10 million to make. Broken down, that's a "couple million," he said, thrown in by Saban Films, which is releasing the movie. It also includes a "couple million" from Universal, which came in to release the movie outside of North America. The rest was done through equity financing. Smith is using the roadshow as his means to pay that back.
The roadshow tour has close to 80 dates across the country going until early next year and most are sold out already. And Saban Films will expand the release to more theaters beginning Friday.
"We'll be able to pay back our equity financiers from just the tour money," Smith said. "Nobody gets paid back in the movie business, so that is big."
But this is not the first time Smith has gone the do-it-yourself route and found success. In 2011, when no distributor would released his thriller "Red State," he took it out on the road and brought in over $1 million domestically playing over 28 weeks.
The first weekend of the "Red State" release, on one screen, Smith brought in $204,230.
You have to respect the hustle.