Netflix published on Sunday, 18 October, the first box-office figure in the platform’s history: La bola negra, the film by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (Los Javis), took $277,500 in the 16–18 October weekend from four theatres in New York and Los Angeles. That is $69,375 a screen. Box Office Mojo marks the daily totals as estimates. It is not Monday’s final accounting and not a national haul: it is four screens.

IndieWire gives the same figure and puts the average as the second-highest of all time for a non-English-language film. El Mundo writes, more briefly, “the second-best per-screen average for a non-English-language film”. The ranking is the trade press’s, not an Academy table. The weekend figure remains Netflix’s estimate.

The four halls are in New York and Los Angeles, El Mundo and IndieWire write. El Mundo lists a North American expansion plan — 149 theatres in the US, six in Canada, two in Puerto Rico, through 23 November. That is a timetable, not what played this weekend.

On 2 December the film goes on Netflix. The platform bought US rights at Cannes, El Mundo writes, for about $5m. The sum is cited, not a published contract. In Spain, Box Office Mojo lists about $26.5m since the 25 September opening. It is not “€30m” and it is not an Oscar.

The film, 2 hours 40 minutes, is drawn from the four surviving pages of an unfinished play by Federico García Lorca. It follows three lives of gay men, in 1932, 1937 and 2017. Spain has sent it to the Oscars as its international-feature entry; a submission is not a nomination. The dream of 7–14 nominations, which El Mundo relays, stays speculation.

Sunday’s closed fact is the disclosure: Netflix put out a number, $277,500 from four theatres. The rest — what survives the audit, what the average does at a few hundred screens, what the Academy does — is not in the till.

Image: Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood, October 2008, Andreas Praefcke, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The historic hall, not this weekend’s four screens and not the film’s poster.

Sources consulted: Los Javis seducen también a EEUU: La bola negra triunfa en su primer fin de semana en cines — El Mundo; ‘La Bola Negra’ Earns $277,500 in Limited Release as Netflix Reports Box Office Results for the First Time — IndieWire.