Even Kevin Smith Didn't Realize Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Broke This Record

Film has accomplished something no other movie has
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 9, 2020 6:38 PM CDT
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Quietly Breaking Records
This Sept. 25, 2019, photo shows Kevin Smith, left, and Jason Mewes posing during an interview in Los Angeles to promote the film "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot."   (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP)

Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Reboot opened last year and has been following an interesting "traveling roadshow" format, in which the filmmaker took the show on the road. Because of that, it broke what Cinema Blend calls "a very specific box office record," and, as Forbes puts it, no one really noticed. Specifically, the movie made $93,520 during its opening weekend last October—notable because it opened in just one theater, giving it, at the time, the highest per-screen average of 2019. (Parasite later broke the record for the year after its smash success at the Oscars.) Just 42 other movies have ever posted a per-theater average that high. "Thank you to Travis Bean at @Forbes for pointing out a box office record I had no idea #JayAndSilentBobReboot broke," Smith tweeted in response to the article.

The movie then went on to achieve a per-screen average of at least $60,000, still a staggering amount, three additional times during its tour; it's the only movie in history ever to have accomplished that. It set that record in an interesting fashion as well; after its opening weekend, it expanded to 17 theaters, then decreased until it was only showing in one theater by Dec. 20. But it started increasing again the following month, showing in two theaters on the weekend of Jan. 10, four theaters Feb. 7, and three theaters Feb. 14. Over those three weekends, it pulled in its historic averages of $76,768, $63,980 and $63,986 per theater. As Smith concluded his tweet, "And big thanks to all of you tour ticket buyers who made it happen!" (More Kevin Smith stories.)

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