‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Wasn’t a Sleeper Box Office Darling

When it first premiered at SXSW way back in the spring 2025, director Andrew Patterson’s “The Rivals of Amziah King” looked like it could be a future awards contender and major crowdpleaser, a triumphant return to the screen for star Matthew McConaughey (for the first time in six years) and an affirmation of rising director Patterson (“The Vast of Night”).

But the film‘s combination of bluegrass-tinged saga and crime film, which followed McConaughey as a singing beekeeper, took some time to find a home and proved to be a harder sell for international audiences, so producer and financier Black Bear opted to release “Amziah King” itself.

The film’s limited opening this past weekend, more than a year after that strong world premiere, was respectable, but not the heralded summer sleeper we may have hoped for.

With just over $1 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend from 632 theaters, “The Rivals of Amziah King” failed to crack the domestic Top 10 in a slower mid-August weekend and managed a per-screen-average of $1,625. That put it behind the concert film “Katseye: Wild Hearts” (also in limited release), Bollywood movie “Vishwanath & Sons” (which was on even fewer screens), and the tenth anniversary re-release of the popular anime “Your Name.”

“Amziah King” is still one of the first releases for Black Bear’s new distribution arm, which also has, to date, put out the Sydney Sweeney boxing biopic “Christy,” Daniel Roher’s “Tuner,” and Guy Ritchie’s “In the Grey.” “Christy” quickly became a punching bag as a major flop from last fall, bringing in just shy of $2 million domestic despite a budget of $15 million and the belief that Sweeney could launch that movie into orbit.

But “Tuner” has proven to be a pleasant surprise. It opened on just four screens this Memorial Day and had a PSA of $26,105. It did $1.7 million in its second weekend from 452 screens, fewer than “Amziah King” did in its opening. It topped out at $4.4 million domestic, the type of specialized release that clearly benefitted from word of mouth and some light awards chatter.

Can that still happen with “Amziah King”? The film is unlikely to expand wider next weekend and will ultimately hit a similar screen count to what “Tuner” did in its own run, never going above 500 theaters, so it will rely on critics and awards buzz to help it grow. IndieWire’s review wasn’t glowing out of last year’s SXSW, but it has a strong Rotten Tomatoes score and a premise that certainly stands out. (In fact, the film’s premise is so unique that comping it to other films would be both tricky and fruitless.)

Perhaps the best comp is to another Black Bear film that hasn’t come out yet, “Wicker,” another starry festival darling with an unusual premise, following a character played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman who falls in love with a man made of wicker. That film has been picking up its own grassroots buzz since it premiered at this year’s Sundance, with people online seeing the first trailer and almost instantly making memes about what it must feel like to sleep with essentially a giant basket.

Regardless, some growing pains are to be expected for some of these upstart distributors, with everyone from 1-2 Special to Row K (which has certainly had its share of problems) trying to thread a needle with smaller films, many of them still with big stars and commercial premises, hoping to find their audience in an unforgiving theatrical market.

“The Rivals of Amziah King” isn’t a flop, but it seems like it’s going to take a bit longer to find its own audience.