Everything Everywhere All at Once, the first picture distributed by independent studio A24 to cross the $100 million mark globally, defies the prevalent narrative about what works and what doesn’t at the box office these days. The picture, which was released in March, has grossed $68.9 million in the United States and an additional $31.1 million abroad.
Everything Everywhere All at Once was made on a $25 million budget by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, also known as the Daniels.
This weekend, A24 re-released the picture with eight minutes of new content, and it still raked in $650,000 from roughly 1,500 theatres despite being accessible on digital. Hereditary ($79 million worldwide), Lady Bird ($78 million worldwide) and Moonlight ($65 million) are among the other A24 successes that have raked in millions of dollars for the company. A24’s highest-grossing domestically was the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, which raked in $50 million. With a worldwide total of $6.2 million, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, Hong Kong, Germany, and the Netherlands are the top-performing international markets for Everything Everywhere All at Once. At a time when most movies rely largely on opening weekend profits, this is a true-blue sleeper smash. Spidey: No Way Home, which had a ten-times-larger budget and finished its international run with nearly $1.9 billion in worldwide box office receipts, was the preceding multiverse-hopping picture.
Both films were compared and lauded for their emotional resonance, regardless of their genre roots in Everything Everywhere All at Once. This bizarre mash-up of martial arts flicks and filmmaker Wong Kar-soaring wai’s romances stars Michelle Yeoh and is already receiving Oscar attention. But the core of the novel is about a mother and her daughter, and how their generational split threatens to rip them apart. The film’s portrayal of minority cultures, Son Lux’s soundtrack, and the reintroduction of Ke Huy Quan, widely remembered for his role as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom over four decades ago, have all been hailed as strengths of the film. That’s what a raving review by Ross Bonaime termed it. Everything Everywhere All at Once also features Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Jenny Slate, and Jamie Lee Curtis as co-producers Joe and Anthony Russo.