--- title: 'A24’s Tony Turns a Tiny Start Into a $5 Million Weekend' type: 'blog post' section: 'Industry' format: 'Editorial feature' standfirst: 'The Anthony Bourdain biopic jumped from specialty heat to a seventh-place box office finish. For A24, it is another summer win built on expansion, not brute force.' author: 'CinePixo' published: '2026-08-24' updated: '2026-08-24' about_people: - 'Anthony Bourdain' - 'Dominic Sessa' - 'Matt Johnson' - 'Emilia Jones' - 'Antonio Banderas' about_films: - 'Tony (2026)' tags: - 'A24 Tony box office' - 'Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony' - 'Dominic Sessa Tony movie' - 'Tony 2026 indie box office' - 'A24 summer box office 2026' - 'Matt Johnson Tony film' sources: - 'https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/a24-tony-heats-indie-box-202936766.html' - 'https://www.indiewire.com/news/box-office/indie-specialized-box-office-camp-miasma-tony-expansion-1235211578/' - 'https://deadline.com/2026/08/indie-film-box-office-bourdain-biopic-top-2026-limited-opening-1237029670/' - 'https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/anthony-bourdain-biopic-tony-headlines-a-busy-indie-box-office-with-349000-in-limited-release/ar-AA29Jbh5' canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/blog/a24s-tony-turns-a-tiny-start-into-a-5-million-weekend' publisher: 'CinePixo' --- # A24’s Tony Turns a Tiny Start Into a $5 Million Weekend *The Anthony Bourdain biopic jumped from specialty heat to a seventh-place box office finish. For A24, it is another summer win built on expansion, not brute force.* By CinePixo, 2026-08-24 · Industry A24’s Tony earned $5 million from 1,652 screens and landed in seventh place on the weekend box office chart, Yahoo Entertainment reported on August 23. The Anthony Bourdain biopic opened on August 7 in only six theaters, then widened after two strong specialty weekends. That is the part film readers should watch: Tony did not arrive as a pre-sold studio machine. It moved from New York and Los Angeles heat to a real national footprint, and it did so while several other indie releases struggled to turn attention into ticket sales. ## A24 Turns Six Theaters Into a National Play Deadline reported that Tony began with $349,000 from six theaters in New York and Los Angeles, good for a per-screen average of about $58,000. The outlet also reported sold-out shows in both markets across that first weekend. That is the old specialty model working as intended: start small, let the audience prove the case, then spend the next weekends asking how far the movie can travel. IndieWire reported that in its second weekend, Tony made $741,751 from 37 locations, for a $20,047 average, bringing it to roughly $1.268 million at that point. By the weekend Yahoo Entertainment covered on August 23, the film had reached 1,652 screens and $5 million for the frame. Its total stood at $6.6 million since release, according to the same report. Those numbers do not make Tony a blockbuster. They make it something more useful for this corner of the business: a movie that found oxygen after opening small. A24 has built plenty of its identity on that skill, but it still matters when the trick works. ![Emilia Jones](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/1aa76a92-c04a-4779-a8f8-9c38459f956f.webp) *Photo: Lyn Fairly Media · [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emilia_Jones_2022_(cropped).jpg)* ## Dominic Sessa’s Bourdain Film Had a Clear Hook Tony centers on Anthony Bourdain’s time working in Provincetown, where the film says he found his love of cooking. Deadline described Matt Johnson’s film as imagining the summer when a 19-year-old Bourdain found that pull while working in a seaside kitchen. Dominic Sessa stars as Bourdain. Yahoo Entertainment noted that Sessa had drawn critical notice for The Holdovers, and listed Emilia Jones, Dagmara Domińczyk, Leo Woodall, and Antonio Banderas among the cast. Deadline listed Stavros Halkias and Banderas as part of the ensemble, with Banderas playing Bourdain’s mentor. There is obvious commercial danger in a film like this. Bourdain was not just a subject with a career. He was a voice: funny, impatient, curious, wounded on the page and on camera in ways people still remember. Yahoo Entertainment noted his food and travel shows and Kitchen Confidential, and reported that he died in 2018. The reporting also says the film takes liberties with his early years. That matters. A biopic about Bourdain has to sell more than resemblance. It has to make a case for why this version exists at all. ![Antonio Banderas](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/667a0e22-a617-4ae0-b6ae-0cc7a5cfb328.webp) *Photo: Pedro J Pacheco · [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antonio_Banderas_2020.jpg)* ![Anthony Bourdain, Mamie Davis and Charles N. Davis at the 73rd Annual Peabody Awards.](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/08/847dec29-c9f0-4d1a-9ec2-928f12a40006.webp) *Photo: Peabody Awards · [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anthony_Bourdain,_Mamie_Davis,_and_Charles_N._Davis,_May_2014.jpg)* ## The Budget Makes Tony’s Run More Interesting Yahoo Entertainment reported that A24 has not released an official budget for Tony, while a source with knowledge of the production put it under $15 million. That figure is not a guarantee of profit, and the piece does not know the marketing spend. Still, it gives the box office story some shape. A $5 million weekend against a sub-$15 million reported production cost is a different conversation than the same gross attached to a bloated awards-season gamble. It also makes the film’s expansion feel measured rather than desperate. Deadline reported that Tony was set to move into top markets after its opening weekend, ahead of a nationwide break on August 21. Yahoo’s later figures show that wider move paid off, at least for the weekend in question. The reviews helped too. Yahoo Entertainment reported that the film was aided by strong reviews, and Deadline reported it was Certified Fresh at 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of its article. Those are not magic numbers, but they matter for a movie asking adults to leave the house for a dramatized slice of a familiar life. ## A24’s Summer Had More Than One Win Yahoo Entertainment reported that Tony arrived during a strong A24 summer, alongside The Invite at $25.5 million and Backrooms at $396.6 million worldwide. That range is the real flex. A sex comedy, a YouTube-influenced title, and an Anthony Bourdain biopic do not look like one lane. They look like a distributor keeping several doors open while the rest of the market keeps relearning how narrow things get when only giant branded bets are allowed to matter. The same Yahoo report said A24’s The Death of Robin Hood did not connect, topping out at $8.7 million. That keeps the story honest. A24 did not discover a cheat code. It had a summer with misses too. Deadline also placed Tony beside another A24 title, The Moment with Charli xcx, which opened earlier in 2026 to $428,000 on four screens and a per-screen average near $107,000. The studio’s year, at least in these reports, has been less about one kind of film than about knowing when a small opening has earned a bigger room. ## Tony Beat the Weekend’s Indie Squeeze Tony’s $5 million weekend looks sharper beside the other indie numbers Yahoo Entertainment reported. Black Bear’s The Rivals of Amziah King, starring Matthew McConaughey, made $285,000 from 465 theaters in its second weekend and had grossed $1.8 million. Black Bear’s Spa Weekend opened to just over $3 million from 2,009 domestic locations. Vertical’s The Magic Faraway Tree, with Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, opened to $1.4 million from 1,611 theaters, according to Yahoo Entertainment. Neon’s horror film It Ends made $60,000 from five screens. IndieWire’s earlier specialty chart showed how tight the race had been before Tony widened. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma had edged Tony over the August 14-16 weekend, with $890,715 from 54 locations compared with Tony’s $741,751 from 37. IndieWire reported both films had reached about $1.268 million overall at that stage. Then Tony broke wider and changed the conversation. Not into a fairy tale. Into a number: $5 million, 1,652 screens, seventh place, and a Bourdain film that got out of the specialty box without losing the scent of where it started. ## How this piece was made **Format:** Editorial feature ## In this piece - [Anthony Bourdain](https://cinepixo.com/people/anthony-bourdain) - [Dominic Sessa](https://cinepixo.com/people/dominic-sessa) - [Matt Johnson](https://cinepixo.com/people/matt-johnson-2) - [Emilia Jones](https://cinepixo.com/people/emilia-jones) - [Antonio Banderas](https://cinepixo.com/people/antonio-banderas) - 2026 · [Tony](https://cinepixo.com/movies/tony-2026) ## Sources - https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/a24-tony-heats-indie-box-202936766.html - https://www.indiewire.com/news/box-office/indie-specialized-box-office-camp-miasma-tony-expansion-1235211578/ - https://deadline.com/2026/08/indie-film-box-office-bourdain-biopic-top-2026-limited-opening-1237029670/ - https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/anthony-bourdain-biopic-tony-headlines-a-busy-indie-box-office-with-349000-in-limited-release/ar-AA29Jbh5 Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours. Source: https://cinepixo.com/blog/a24s-tony-turns-a-tiny-start-into-a-5-million-weekend Written for CinePixo. Nothing on this page is imported prose.