Director David Lowery’s medieval epic adaptation The Green Knight has fared far better at the box office than many commentators predicted, so what is behind the movie’s unexpected success? Based on Sir Gaiwan and The Green Knight, an anonymously-authored epic poem from the 14th century, The Green Knight is a daring fusion of fantasy, horror, and action epic. A largely faithful adaptation, the movie sees Dev Patel star as Sir Gaiwan, who enters into a chivalric contest with the eponymous Green Knight and is subsequently sent on a year-long existential quest.

Despite being a small indie movie, The Green Knight opened in the #2 spot and brought in $6.8 million in its opening weekend. While this would be considered an underperformance for a tentpole summer blockbuster, for an independent movie based on a relatively obscure historical text, The Green Knight's box office is an impressive achievement. This has understandably led many commentators to wonder how The Green Knight over-performed, an achievement particularly notable in a year when COVID-19 restrictions mean many bigger movies are failing to impress in theatres.

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For context, in box office terms, a $6.8 million opening weekend is not usually considered a huge amount. However, for an indie released during a pandemic, The Green Knight’s haul is impressive, and doubly so considering its budget was less than $30 million (most of which was already recouped by foreign sales according to Deadline). The Green Knight’s success can be chalked up to numerous factors, most of all its rave reviews, excellent word of mouth, and smart marketing campaign. Unlike recent critically-disliked Medieval movies such as King Arthur: Legend of the Sword or The Kid Who Would Be King, The Green Knight does not prioritize making its story more palatable for mainstream audiences and instead leans into the dark undercurrent of psychological horror beneath the source poem’s surface.

Sir Gaiwan’s quest is a haunting one filled with strange detours and unsettling encounters, many of which would be flattened into action set-pieces by a more conventional adaptation. Instead, The Green Knight keeps its story as strange as its source, while masterfully using promotional materials to supplement the audience’s understanding of the story. A24 released a tie-in tabletop roleplaying game for the movie, and a YouTube video entitled “An Oral History of the Green Knight” garnered an impressive seven million views in the months before The Green Knight’s release. This strategy ensured the distributor both built hype for the release and ensured viewers could make sense of the plot once the movie arrived in theatres.

The positive critical reception of The Green Knight is also instrumental to its success, with the movie being an unfiltered distillation of its director’s singular style. The most recent independent movie to earn a similarly impressive opening weekend haul was 2019’s Midsommar, and Ari Aster’s folk horror took a similar approach to The Green Knight in terms of its production and marketing. Both movies were produced on comparatively small budgets to give their creators maximum creative freedom, then playfully marketed as dark, folk-horror-tinged tales that earned mainstream acclaim thanks to Midsommar and The Green Knight's bold, original storytelling.

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