Movie industry analysts were impressed with a nearly $10-million opening weekend for "The Bikeriders," the 1960s motorcycle gang film starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Tom Hardy shot throughout Greater Cincinnati two years ago.
"The Bikeriders" zoomed to third overall at the box office — behind runaway summer hit "Inside Out 2" ($101 million) and "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" ($18.8 million) — but it left the other movies premiering last week in a cloud of dust.
Among the new films were "The Exorcism" (No. 7 at $2.45 million), "Thelma" (No. 8 at $2.3 million), "GHOST: Rite Here Rite Now" (No. 10 at $1.5 million), "Kinds of Kindness" (No. 14 at $377,289) and "I Am: Celine Dion" (No. 16 at $281,558).
The Hollywood Reporter said that grossing $9,698,275 in 2,642 theaters was “on the high end of expectations” for the film written and directed by Jeff Nichols. Variety called it “a decent start for an arthouse drama … (which) carries a relatively sizable $35 million production budget.”
“This is a respectable result for a wide-release arthouse title in a marketplace still licking its wounds from two strikes and COVID, and this Austin Butler movie isn’t exactly Elvis in its story of a brutal motorcycle gang,” Deadline reported.
Nichols wrote the script based on Danny Lyon’s "The Bikeriders" book, a 1968 collection of photographs and interviews about the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club. The story is told through Kathy (Emmy-winner Comer for BBC America’s "Killing Eve"), who falls in love and marries the charismatic loner Benny (Butler from "Elvis," "Dune Part Two," "Masters of the Air," "Once Upon A Time … in Hollywood"). Benny is torn between Kathy and riding with the Chicago Vandals gang led by Johnny (Tom Hardy from "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "The Dark Knight Rises").
As I wrote after screening the premiere last week: This cinematic ride isn’t for everyone. There’s plenty of violence, blood and profanity. (What did you expect? It’s about a motorcycle gang!)
The Hollywood websites praised the Focus Features marketing team for attracting older males into theaters. The film production and distribution company aggressively promoted it by having stars do interviews on late-night television and with newspapers and websites for the June 21 premiere — 10 months after its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival Aug. 31. The trailer released last September promoted a Dec. 1, 2023, release which was delayed until last weekend due to the impact of the Hollywood actors' and writers' strikes.
The nearly two-hour film was shot entirely throughout Cincinnati, Southwestern Ohio and Northern Kentucky, from the Ludlow (Ky.) Theater to the Lakeside Inn in Middletown. Thanks to Film Cincinnati scouts, Nichols used parts of Lockland, Northside, Hamilton, the Edgewater Motor Sports Park near Cleves and several country roads lined by cornfields for the film about a Chicago-based gang set in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.
“It was all shot on location here,” Nichols told me before the local premiere June 19 at Mariemont Theatre. “There were no sets, no CGI (computer generated imagery)."
The film also stars Michael Shannon ("The Shape of Water," "George & Tammy," "The Space Within"); Mike Faist ("West Side Story"); Norman Reedus ("The Walking Dead"); and Damon Herriman ("Justified," "Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood").
