'Game of Thrones' Star's Return to the Fantasy Genre Is Officially a Box Office Winner

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema. 

While Bill Skarsgård can be seen in the recently released World War II action film The Mosquito Bowl and Gustaf Skarsgård headlines the Netflix movie The Storm, their older brother Alexander Skarsgård has delivered a word-of-mouth hit at the box office. The movie has defied the odds over the course of the past week, providing much-needed counter-programming for older women while the market is dominated by films aimed at other demographics. A24’s You Can See Everything remains the number-one choice for younger crowds, while Heart of the Beast continues to pull older men. The romance fantasy starring Skarsgård, on the other hand, delivered a better hold this past weekend than either of those films.

The movie in question exceeded expectations in its opening weekend by grossing $5.7 million from less than 1,500 theaters nationwide. This marked a major win for Black Bear Pictures, which is otherwise best known for releasing Guy Ritchie‘s In the Grey and the Jason Statham vehicle Shelter. The romance fantasy, which also features Oscar-winner Olivia Colman, delivered a higher opening-weekend haul than both In the Grey and Shelter, which made $2.9 million and $5.5 million in their debut frames, respectively.

Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.

You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.

• This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
  fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
• You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
  everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
• The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
  every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
• You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.

You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.

• One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
  each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
• You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
  somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
• The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
  harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
• You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
  it.

You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.

• Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
  a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
• You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
  Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
• The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
  rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
• You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
  got told wrong.

You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.

• Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
  which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
• You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
  something nobody thought to test for.
• The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
  every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
• Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
  difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.

Here’s How Much the Romance Fantasy Film Has Grossed So Far

• Image via Black Bear Pictures

• Image via Black Bear Pictures

• Image via Black Bear Pictures.

• Image via Black Bear Pictures.

• Image via Black Bear Pictures.

• Image via Black Bear Pictures

• Image via Black Bear Pictures

• Image via Black Bear Pictures.

• Image via Black Bear Pictures.

• Image via Black Bear Pictures.

We’re talking, of course, about Wicker. The movie holds a “Certified Fresh” 95% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 92% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The site’s consensus reads, “Wicker is a charming fable that strikes the right balance between naughty and nice, drawing much of its appeal from deftly deployed salty humor, seamless creature effects, and Olivia Colman’s eminently lovable performance.” In its second weekend, the film dropped by just 24%, grossing $4.3 million and taking its running total past the $13 million mark. It has already recouped its reported $10 million budget. Black Bear also increased Wicker‘s theater count to nearly 2,400 domestic locations. Also starring Tenet‘s Elizabeth Debicki, Game of Thrones‘ Peter Dinklage, and Loki‘s Richard E. Grant, Wicker premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and is being positioned as an awards contender.

Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.