{"id":445791,"date":"2026-04-21T03:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/445791\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T03:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:46:13","slug":"why-magnolia-took-its-biggest-swing-yet-on-bob-odenkirks-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/445791\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Magnolia Took Its Biggest Swing Yet on Bob Odenkirk’s ‘Normal’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we spoke with Bob Odenkirk<\/a> ahead of last year\u2019s Toronto International Film<\/a> Festival, the star of \u201cNormal<\/a>\u201d was clear about his ambitions to continue making more action movies with \u201cJohn Wick\u201d writer Derek Kolstad. Even though there\u2019s still an audience for a generic beat-em-up movie, he said, he\u2019s interested in doing something deeper.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a cookie cutter action type story you can tell and it will satisfy an audience, I understand that. I grasp that there\u2019s an audience out there, and I don\u2019t want to name names, but I don\u2019t need to because you can conjure them up without effort,\u201d Odenkirk previously told IndieWire<\/a>. \u201cThere is a kind of movie that if you make it and it looks reliably satisfying, it will get its audience. But I\u2019m always trying to find something more, find something more to the form, smuggle in something more than just the accepted values of that genre.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Inherent<\/a> \"Will<\/a> <\/p>\n

Trying to go beyond the genre norms may have proved a challenge for his new film \u201cNormal,\u201d which Magnolia<\/a> opened this weekend to a modest $2.65 million domestic, seventh place for the weekend. <\/p>\n

Magnolia took \u201cNormal\u201d wider than any film it has released in its existence, opening on just over 2,000 screens. Odenkirk and company had even been talking sequel. It\u2019s being positioned like a more traditional commercial action movie with that big of a push, and with an estimated per-screen-average of just $1,286, it\u2019s possible audiences didn\u2019t quite see it that way.<\/p>\n

The number of screens it committed to emphasizes the strength Magnolia saw in \u201cNormal.\u201d In many cases, booking as many screens as you can is merely a function of them being available. Even with tentpoles like \u201cThe Super Mario Galaxy Movie\u201d and \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d still going strong<\/a>, there\u2019s not necessarily enough product to go around (the other major new opening was \u201cLee Cronin\u2019s The Mummy\u201d), so theaters will gladly book something like \u201cNormal.\u201d<\/p>\n

But without a platform build-up for a movie like this to establish some word of mouth, shooting your shot by going as wide as possible in Weekend 1 doesn\u2019t necessarily bode well for it to sustain long term.<\/p>\n

IndieWire, though, understands that Magnolia is happy with the outcome, and the distributor never saw \u201cNormal\u201d as a specialized film. Odenkirk proved he could open an action film with two \u201cNobody\u201d movies, the latter of which in 2025 made $43.2 million worldwide, so it would be short changing \u201cNormal\u201d to open on significantly fewer screens than that franchise. In fact, the distributor had been aligned with Odenkirk and Kolstad since TIFF about how wide they wanted \u201cNormal\u201d to open, and the good news is even with \u201cMichael\u201d opening next weekend, \u201cNormal\u201d figures to maintain nearly all of its screen count for Weekend 2.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too far from where we see most wider-release indies falling of late, and Magnolia\u2019s own \u201cThelma\u201d from 2024 is exactly the template Magnolia is looking at with \u201cNormal.\u201d Considering that film was a sleeper hit and Magnolia\u2019s biggest narrative film ever<\/a>, it would be a solid outcome. \u201cThelma\u201d opened slightly below \u201cNormal,\u201d to about $2.3 million, but it also did so on over 700 fewer screens and managed a per-screen-average of $1,785. It then ultimately made $9 million domestic and $13 million worldwide, and it did so with above-average holds week-over-week, even as it lost theaters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThelma\u201d was an original, fun, indie summer crowdpleaser, and though Odenkirk is a few decades June Squibb\u2019s junior, both films fit into the offbeat action mold that surely informed how Magnolia wished to roll out \u201cNormal.\u201d All of it is part of a reinvention of itself to more commercial fare that could play in the theater.<\/p>\n

The difference is that \u201cNormal\u201d received a major marketing push that exceeded \u201cThelma,\u201d as did the acquisition cost, and in fact among the biggest P&A spend for the distributor ever, IndieWire understands. Odenkirk toured the film as part of a roadshow to SXSW, his hometown of Chicago, and even the real-life Normal, IL. The distributor also did a marketing campaign featuring QR codes that let you vote for \u201cBob for Sheriff,\u201d and there\u2019s even an upcoming USO show with the film later this week.<\/p>\n

And unlike \u201cThelma,\u201d \u201cNormal\u201d is also an R-rated, very violent property that premiered in Midnight Madness at TIFF and perhaps doesn\u2019t have the same wide appeal. Audiences for \u201cNormal\u201d were largely male and over 35, but the film didn\u2019t overperform or underperform in any particular market nationwide that suggests it wasn\u2019t well-positioned. Though \u201cNobody\u201d is a viable comp, \u201cNormal\u201d is a darker, more serious film than that franchise and may not have had the exact same wide reach. <\/p>\n

Still to come, Magnolia has three other festival favorites in John Early\u2019s \u201cMaddie\u2019s Secret,\u201d Gregg Araki\u2019s \u201cI Want Your Sex,\u201d and John Wilson\u2019s \u201cThe History of Concrete.\u201d All three are more genre-bending titles that, like \u201cNormal,\u201d Magnolia hopes to turn into commercial hits. For \u201cI Want Your Sex,\u201d the expectation is that it will open on potentially half as many screens as \u201cNormal,\u201d and it will do so opposite \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day.\u201d <\/p>\n

Still, recreating the success of something like \u201cThelma\u201d? Easier said than done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we spoke with Bob Odenkirk ahead of last year\u2019s Toronto International Film Festival, the star of \u201cNormal\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[37924,9867,434,18,117,597,19,17,170190,37927],"class_list":{"0":"post-445791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-bob-odenkirk","9":"tag-box-office","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-film","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-magnolia","17":"tag-normal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116440648554105207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}