Wordplay. Wow.

[saxikath]

According to Box Office Mojo, Wordplay ranked 20th in terms of overall gross take last weekend. And that's for a film showing in only 45 theaters; of the films above it in the list, the one at the fewest theaters is Poseidon, with 337. In terms of money per theater, Wordplay comes in just behind Click and Waist Deep and a couple of new films that were debuting at single theaters.

Just think about that for a second. The 20th most popular movie, on a summer weekend, was a documentary. About crosswords.

It was fun to see it in a theater on Saturday. There were a bunch of us puzzle folks there, but it was great to see and hear an audience of people who didn't know the featured people, and didn't know how it turned out react to the movie.

Hell of a ride we're on, ain't it?

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not surprised, given your loyal fan base. :-)

[totient]

I really enjoyed it, too. Fun to say "ooh, there she is!" but more importantly, fun to see Jon Stewart ham it up, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, the explanations, some very well done dramatic tension (even knowing how it turns out), the fun picture-in-picture bits, the bits about how puzzles are constructed ("I think I'll put an E here" just blew me away), and so on. I saw it with miss_chance who has recently gotten into crosswords, which was also really neat.

Hell of a ride we're on, ain't it?

[ennienyc.livejournal.com]

That's for sure!

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes! :{)}

[fizzixrat.livejournal.com]

In addition to the topic itself and the people featured, it's just a well-crafted film, really. That helps a lot too. The advance screenings should also help generate some cross-word-of-mouth buzz too, if you know what I mean. :)