- Welcome to the Rileys box office: Starring The Twilight Saga’s Kristen Stewart, three-time Emmy winner James Gandolfini, and Oscar nominee Melissa Leo, Jake Scott’s low-budget indie drama has bombed in limited release in the United States. But why?
Welcome to the Rileys box office: Kristen Stewart indie opened to dismal numbers in three U.S. urban centers
Oct. 29–31 (Halloween) weekend box office (cont.): Starring Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini, and Melissa Leo, Jake Scott’s indie drama Welcome to the Rileys opened at no. 42 in the domestic market, grossing $42,145 from 10 theaters (Los Angeles, New York, and Boston) as per final studio figures found at boxofficemojo.com.
That’s an awful per-theater average – $4,214 – for a movie in platform (very limited) release featuring three well-known actors, one of whom, Kristen Stewart, has the lead in one of the most successful movie franchises ever.
What could have happened?
Social media buzz not enough
An Anglo-American production about a young, foul-mouthed New Orleans stripper, pole dancer, and sex worker who is befriended by a bereaved Midwestern couple – their teenage daughter has died – Welcome to the Rileys was shot on location in late fall 2008 (around the time the first Twilight movie came out). In case (unverified) online sources are accurate, the indie cost between $5–$10 million (as always, not including marketing and distribution expenses).
About a year after production wrapped, Welcome to the Rileys debuted at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it unsurprisingly became one of the most talked-about titles.
After all, director Jake Scott is the son of Alien and Gladiator filmmaker Ridley Scott and the nephew of Tony Scott, whose action thriller Unstoppable opens next weekend.
James Gandolfini is a three-time Emmy winner for The Sopranos, while Melissa Leo is a Best Actress Academy Award nominee for Frozen River (2008).
But buzziest of all was Kristen Stewart, The Twilight Saga’s Bella Swan, ever torn between vampire Robert Pattinson and werewolf Taylor Lautner. Twitter and other social media outlets were aflutter with tweets, posts, and comments about the fearlessly virginal Bella in the role of a New Orleans pole dancer/sex worker who snarls lines like, “And I don’t do anal, either, just so you know.”
Bad combo: Mixed reviews + inappropriate marketing focus
There are at least a couple of good reasons for the disconnect between the healthy buzz and the anemic ticket-buying.
The most obvious one is that, having received unenthusiastic reviews (see further below), Welcome to the Rileys failed to lure “arthouse” moviegoers. In fact, the film’s cool reception left it in distribution limbo until Apparition and Sony Worldwide bought it for a reported seven figures – no small amount in the current on-life-support indie market.
Apparition’s troubles following internal disagreements about the distribution of Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning’s rock biopic The Runaways earlier this year, resulted in Samuel Goldwyn Films handling the Welcome to the Rileys release in the United States.
And here we get to reason no. 2: Goldwyn’s marketing campaign – press materials, film clips, interviews, online pieces – focused almost exclusively on Stewart.
Admittedly, that made sense up to a point, considering that without Bella Swan Welcome to the Rileys would most likely have gone straight to DVD despite the presence of Gandolfini and Leo, neither of whom, Emmy wins/Oscar nod notwithstanding, has Stewart’s name recognition.
But here’s the apparent miscalculation: Kristen Stewart’s ardent fandom is, for the most part, directly tied to the Twilight Saga movies. In other words, the fans who have turned Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse into global blockbusters may have little desire to see their idol in a role so distant from Bella. Indeed, Stewart’s non-Twilight movies released in the last couple of years – all modestly budgeted indies – have been anything but hits.
Slumdog Millionaire
Also worth noting, Goldwyn (with Sony’s help?) had about five months (June–November) to plan Welcome to the Rileys’ distribution and marketing.
Was that too short a window?
Not necessarily. In the most famous rags-to-riches Hollywood tale in recent memory, Fox Searchlight acquired Danny Boyle’s about-to-go-straight-to-DVD Slumdog Millionaire in August 2008, and, with the assistance of Warner Bros., three months later released the eventual Best Picture Academy Award winner.
What made the difference?
For starters, Fox Searchlight’s marketing campaign for Slumdog Millionaire was surely far more generous than Samuel Goldwyn’s for Welcome to the Rileys.
Additionally, Slumdog Millionaire’s reviews were far more enthusiastic, eventually leading to numerous trophies that culminated on its Best Picture Oscar win. (Late November update: Welcome to the Rileys was nowhere to be found among this year’s Gotham Award nominees.)
But isn’t it ridiculous to compare Slumdog Millionaire to Welcome to the Rileys?
Following its worldwide box office success, yes. Had Slumdog Millionaire gone straight to DVD back in late 2008, no. In other words, it’s “ridiculous” because Slumdog Millionaire performed uncommonly well whereas Welcome to the Rileys is performing disastrously.
Platform releases for the uninitiated
Now, here’s one important clarification for those who furiously wrote me saying that Welcome to the Rileys couldn’t have done better business because it’s only playing in three cities.
Guess what? Limited releases are just that: Limited. A few cities, a deliberate roll-out as word-of-mouth and media interest (one hopes) lead to more awareness about a particular title. That’s the usual strategy for “small,” “independent,” “foreign,” “edgy,” or “art” films.
Welcome to the Rileys opened at 10 locations. Unless we’re discussing box-sized rooms for five people, Jake Scott’s drama should have averaged at the very least $20,000 per venue on its debut weekend. That would have meant more cities and more theaters in the near future.
As it stands, chances of a meaningful expansion are all but nil.
Mao’s Last Dancer
For comparison’s sake: Back in August, Bruce Beresford’s Goldwyn-distributed Mao’s Last Dancer, without any awards-season buzz or major stars (though based on a well-known novel), took in $200,000 from 33 theaters, or $6,050 per theater, on its first weekend in the United States. (It had opened in May in Canada.)
The following weekend, after the addition of 42 sites, Mao’s Last Dancer was actually up by more than 50 percent; its per-theater average was $3,995. (The per-theater average drop is normal; all things being equal, the fewer the number of theaters showing a movie, the higher the per-theater average should be.)
Mao’s Last Dancer has gone on to earn $4.8 million in North America (U.S. and Canada only). After opening in the U.S., its biggest drop-off rate was 31 percent following the loss of 16 theaters on weekend no. 8.
Update: On weekend no. 2 (Nov. 5–7), Welcome to the Rileys was down a horrendous 57 percent, collecting $18,226 from 10 venues, or $1,823 per theater.
Please Give
Here’s another comparison: A Sony Pictures Classics release, Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give features no major stars, unusual “hooks,” or box office gimmicks. Even so, this acclaimed R-rated comedy-drama (82 percent approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes’ “top critics”) took in $118,000 from five theaters when it opened last spring. Its per-theater average was $23,624.
Considering its relatively solid debut, Please Give added 21 theaters on weekend no. 2: It jumped 104 percent, grossing $241,000 or $9,275 per site. Please Give ended its domestic run with $4.3 million.
The Kids Are All Right
A third comparison: Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right – an R-rated dramatic comedy starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple, and Mark Ruffalo as the father of their children – has raked in $20.8 million domestically. The debut weekend of this Focus Features release remains 2010’s best in terms of per-theater average, a whopping $70,281 from seven locations, or a total of $492,000.
Why so popular?
Well, one good reason is that The Kids Are All Right received fantastic reviews, while both Bening and Moore (and to a lesser extent Ruffalo) have been touted as potential Oscar nominees.
Welcome to the Rileys has had none of that.
Disastrous global gross
Update: The Kristen Stewart indie drama Welcome to the Rileys ultimately collected $158,898 domestically and $199,116 (surely incomplete) internationally. Worldwide total: $358,014.
Only three European countries are listed at Box Office Mojo, with France at no. 1 with $158,484 – relatively speaking, a far better (or far less wobbly) performance than the domestic one.
Welcome to the Rileys reviews: Not ‘Bella Does New Orleans’
Directed by Jake Scott, Welcome to the Rileys, which opened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, has been greeted by mixed-to-lukewarm reviews.
For the most part, reviewers have faulted Ken Hixon’s screenplay about a grieving couple (James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo) whose marriage has all but crumbled following the death of their young daughter.
During a trip to New Orleans, the husband meets up with a teenage stripper/sex worker (Kristen Stewart) whom he decides to rescue from a life of long poles, red lights, and loud music.
Shot in fall 2008, Welcome to the Rileys, rescued from limbo (following distributor Apparition woes) by Samuel Goldwyn Films, opens today in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston.
Below are review snippets from various publications. It’s unclear how many reviewers were aware that Kristen Stewart was cast in Welcome to the Rileys before the Twilight movies became a cultural phenomenon. (As was the case with her getting cast in Walter Salles’ upcoming On the Road.)
“Like the lives examined here, the film doesn’t always work. … Scott is still too tentative with his actors and hampered by a script that keeps trying to fix too many of Mallory’s problems with new clothes and clean sheets. Fortunately Stewart seems to thrive in water over her head, and when she pulls Gandolfini in with her the movie jells. It makes you wish the filmmaker had left them in the deep end longer.” Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times.
“Ken Hixon’s script artlessly spells out the leads’ psychological motivations, leaving little doubt that Gandolfini is looking for a surrogate for a dead daughter whose presence he still feels keenly, while Stewart is looking for a father figure and a little stability. The bluntness wouldn’t be so oppressive if the film weren’t so austere and glacially paced: Welcome To The Rileys is way too humorless for a film in which Stewart repeatedly refers to her genitals as her ‘cooter.’” Nathan Rabin, A.V. Club.
“What keeps the film’s fragile realism intact are actors who can make even small moments count, as when Lois beams at Doug with eager pleasure, or when Doug strokes Mallory’s head as she’s sleeping, a touch that evokes his loss far better than any expository passage.” Manohla Dargis, The New York Times.
“A special mention has to go to Kristen Stewart who strips herself bare, both literally and figuratively. It’s the details that matter here, not some petulant one-note image drummed up by the press. The rawness of the stripper’s uniform, profane, all panda eyes and duct-taped nipples contrasted with the timid girl scrubbed of make-up, pulling sweater cuffs over her hands and picking at her acne.” Nick Da Costa, Eye for Film.
“Kristen Stewart here is tougher even than her punk rocker in The Runaways. Who knew she had these notes? I’m discovering an important new actress.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.
“As a whole, though, Welcome to the Rileys tiptoes around its emotions without ever committing to them. You’re glad it’s not ‘Tony and Bella’s Big Adventure’ even as you suspect that might have been a lot more fun.” Ty Burr, The Boston Globe.
“And Kristen Stewart — well, yes, once again she’s got a bad case of the mopes. But the flashes of rage convince. And physically — bruised, broken-out, filthy — she does everything she can to avoid any Hollywood touches. (Her fingernails alone look like 10 staph infections.)” Stephen Whitty, The Star-Ledger.
“Welcome to the Rileys Box Office: Kristen Stewart” notes
Unless otherwise noted, “Welcome to the Rileys Box Office: Why Did Kristen Stewart Indie Flop So Badly?” box office information via Box Office Mojo. Budget info – which should be taken with a grain of salt – via BOM and/or other sources (e.g., the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Screen Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline.com, etc.).
Comments about Welcome to the Rileys and other titles being hits/profitable or flops/money-losers at the box office (see paragraph below) are based on the available data about their production budget, additional marketing and distribution expenses (as a general rule of thumb, around 50 percent of the production cost), and worldwide gross (as a general rule of thumb when it comes to the Hollywood studios, around 50–55 percent of the domestic gross and 40 percent of the international gross go to the distributing/producing companies).
Note: Data regarding rebates, domestic and international sales/pre-sales, and other credits and/or contractual details that help to alleviate/split production costs and apportion revenues are oftentimes unavailable, and that reported international grosses may be incomplete (i.e., not every territory is fully – or even partially – accounted for).
Also: Ancillary revenues (domestic/global television rights, home video sales, streaming, merchandising, etc.) can represent anywhere between 40–70 percent of a movie’s total take. However, these revenues and their apportionment are only infrequently made public.
James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart Welcome to the Rileys images: Samuel Goldwyn Films.
“Welcome to the Rileys Box Office: Why Did Kristen Stewart Indie Flop So Badly?” last modified in October 2025.