La La Land doesn’t hit theaters nationwide until December 16, but it opened on December 9 in Los Angeles and New York — and it managed to swoon its way to some record-breaking box office numbers in the process.
On December 9, packed cinemas in L.A. and NYC brought in a whopping $855,000 for the Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling-starring musical, which made it the best all-time average for a film opening in five theaters.
It’s almost the best limited release opening of all time, but not quite: Technically, it made more than Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which opened to the tune of $811,116 in 2014, but that played across four screens — not five. This also means that La La Land has secured the spot for best opening for a specialty film of 2016, an honor previously reserved for Moonlight for its $100,519 opening weekend earnings.
If this is how Damien Chazelle’s musical is faring on a handful of screens, this bodes real, real well for the singing, heartbreaking, parking ticket-paying love story when it expands its reach.
Watch the trailer for La La Land below, and read up on our review of Stone and Gosling’s performances here.
