The Game Has Changed

All that said, it's not as though the phenomenon of summer blockbusters is a new one; it began with Steven Spielberg in the 1970s and soared with the rise of comic book movies in the early 2000s. So why would someone decide to release a non-tentpole movie during the summer months at all?

The thinking is that there are certain audiences that always want counter-programming to the superhero and action movies that dominate May through August, and that by invoking strong sentiment in those audiences, indie movies can stoke positive word of mouth and, slowly but surely, spread the movie to the small theaters throughout the country. Doing so means that, in the best of cases, the distributor is taking in the cash of anyone who wants a break from all the explosions at the multiplex.

Such was the plan with The Kings of Summer. The goal: replicate the phenomenal success of movies like Little Miss Sunshine, which made $100 million worldwide in 2006, a prime example of how a summer indie can become a smash. Plus, Kings is about kids running away during summer vacation, so it seemed like the perfect fit.

The caveat is that — as hard as it is to believe — Little Miss Sunshine was released seven years ago, when superhero action movies didn't have as tight a stranglehold on the country's multiplexes. When it hit theaters in wide release in August, the biggest movies going were the campy Snakes on a Plane and a third weekend of Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights. It was also put out by Fox Searchlight, which has the might of a corporation behind the facade of an indie outfit.

Needless to say, the game has changed. Sure, the industry sounds like classic capitalism — do a good job and you'll be rewarded accordingly — but like any other market in a deregulated economy, there are power structures, from financial muscle to friends in power, in place that create an imbalance of opportunity.

"Usually there's only one film out of all these indies that [is] going to make it each summer," says Jeff Bock, a senior box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations Corporation. "That's just how it is. That's what the marketplace bears."

Vogt-Roberts says that in initial discussions with CBS, the distribution company was talking about "going wide" with his movie. "They thought we were going to play in a couple hundred theaters, maybe get up to 1,000," he remembers, though he admits that nothing was guaranteed.

The company ended up distributing The Kings of Summer in a traditional platform release. Instead of launching in a significant number of theaters nationwide, it was started out in a handful of screens in New York and L.A. and had to prove its viability each weekend to theater owners to add more locations. At the high-water mark of its run, it took in $154,850 from 63 theaters. That weekend saw the release of Man of Steel, which took in $116 million and all but doomed the little indie.

According to independent analysts, both the gross and the number of theaters were disappointing, falling short of the movie's potential.

"It never happened for Kings of Summer, even though it was riding a pretty big wave of buzz out of Sundance," Bock says. "They certainly made less than they spent on it."

Update: CBS Films counters, saying that the box office gross has surpassed the undisclosed sum they spent on the movie.

In a perfect world, Vogt-Roberts, who previously had TV experience as co-creator of Comedy Central's Mash Up, would have loved to see The Kings of Summer released either weeks ahead of the big-budget movie season — which began with Iron Man on May 3 — or at the tail end of it, in late August. But given the subject — teens on summer vacation — as well as a very crowded schedule around the country, they settled on a May 31 launch.

CBS made enough prints to send it around to theaters in shifts, meaning that it will rotate around the mid-sized markets, like Atlanta and Cleveland, for weeks. The studio had an inkling that it would succeed in the heartland of the country, and the 50 or so theaters it's playing per weekend is, CBS says, according to its plan. The company says it is very pleased with the $1 million gross that The Kings of Summer has earned.

The Kings of Summer began with decent opening weekend pull of nearly $15,000 per screen in New York and L.A. It was a solid start, but it takes a stampede of filmgoers to make a difference in these months.

And so, Vogt-Roberts' film added theaters at a glacial pace, its per-screen average slowly falling as attention faded away. A lot of its small marketing budget allotted for before it even hit theaters was spent largely on word-of-mouth screenings. CBS says that it will continue to push it onto about 50 screens per weekend for the next few weeks; the hope is still that it can somehow catch a word-of-mouth wave.

The director isn't bitter, and he credits CBS for taking a risk on the movie in the first place. And at the very least, this first film will be a boon to his rising career. He's more just frustrated with the system that made The Kings of Summer so difficult to succeed. He didn't go into this thing with blind optimism — Vogt-Roberts always knew it'd be difficult to launch an indie movie — but the terrain was far more difficult than expected.