Olsen twins sis’ ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ off to solid start
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Will Elizabeth Olsen — sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen — end up being a bigger box-office draw than her famous twin siblings?
‘Martha Marcy May Marlene,’ the dark drama starring newcomer Lizzie Olsen, as she is called, got off to a strong start in limited release this weekend. The film about a young woman trying to escape the clutches of a cult collected $137,541, according to an estimate from distributor Fox Searchlight. The means that the movie, which played at two theaters in Los Angeles and two in New York, had a strong per-theater average of $34,385.
While the well-reviewed picture is off to one of best starts of any independent film released this year, it remains to be seen whether it will be embraced by a wider audience than the art-house crowd.
“We seem to be capturing two audiences: an edgy crowd who like to go to the ArcLight and then an older crowd who wants to see a well-reviewed movie,” said Sheila DeLoach, Fox Searchlight’s executive vice president.
Searchlight has had success in marketing quirkier films to a broad audience in the past, with last year’s award-winning ‘Black Swan’ collecting $106.9 million in the U.S. Still, none of the movies the distributor has released in 2011 — including ‘Tree of Life’ and ‘Win Win’ — have brought in more than $15 million domestically.
The top-grossing film starring an Olsen twin to date has been this year’s teen flick ‘Beastly,’ which featured Mary-Kate and raked in $27.9 million back in March. The sisters’ second-highest grossing movie was 1995’s ‘It Takes Two,’ a family comedy that made about $20 million. (That’s not counting either twin’s insignificant turn in 1994’s ‘The Little Rascals,’ which grossed more than $50 million.)
For now, that means it’s likely the Olsen twins, now 25, may sustain a better box-office track record than their 22-year-old sister.
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— Amy Kaufman