Gene Wilder Film Continues To Top The Documentary Box Office

Meanwhile, the new documentary about Anita Pallenberg opened in second place among nonfiction features.

Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, and Rain Pryor at the premiere of See No Evil, Hear No Evil as featured in Remembering Gene Wilder (Kino Lorber)

As an actor, Gene Wilder wasn’t a box office icon, though he starred in several hits. Occasionally, as in the cases of Stir Crazy and See No Evil, Hear No Evil, both of which reunited him with Richard Pryor, Wilder even topped the weekend box office charts. This year, nearly a decade since his death, the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory star is proving his box office appeal as the subject of the documentary Remembering Gene Wilder, which continues to dominate among nonfiction features even after its release on VOD/digital.

For the second weekend in a row, Remembering Gene Wilder topped the documentary box office chart, this time with a gross of $10,183. At a 115-percent increase over its previous weekend, that amount was enough to defeat the one newcomer reporting its numbers: Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, which opened to nearly $7,000 across six theatrical venues. The biographical documentary did manage to achieve the best per-screen average for documentaries, with $1,157 from each location. Celebrity profiles filled the top three as Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus continued its success.