It appears that while audiences continue to go see Inconvenient Truth, some of the excitement has worn off. According to BoxOffice Mojo, the film opened in 73 more theaters this weekend, bringing its total to 587, still a tiny number compared to the 3000 screens that blockbusters run on. Across these theaters, the film earned 1.597 million over the weekend, down from the 2.016 million the week before, and the 1.911 million from two weeks back. So far, the film has earned a total of 12.359 million, ranking it fifth all-time among documentaries, just behind Madonna's Truth or Dare
Meanwhile, Gore's book version of the film has moved from #4 to #2 on The New York Times list of best-selling paperback non-fiction.
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Clearly it was a mistake to open only in NYC and LA a month ahead of the national release. I don't know what they were smoking when they came up with that idea, but it's exactly the opposite of every blockbuster marketing plan in which all the big money is set to come in on the opening weekend.
I believe that it mostly to generate mostly word of mouth buzz. Remember, unlike most major studio releases, which are geared toward making money (which why they have those big ad campgians - to bring out their audience in the opening weakend), they are trying to spread a message. Thus, by having the movie released slowly from the metropolises outwards, they are keeping the issue alive, on the op-eds, newscasts and the message boards and blogs of the nation and the world.
We we know if it was a good strategy only after the dust settles. The distribution is still picking up steam, so it is too early to tell if the strategy will work or not.