Moonlight to Expand to +1,500 Theaters After Oscars Success

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In the afterglow of the Oscars, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is finally enjoying the widespread success it deserves. The film, which last Sunday won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay, is expanding its reach to more than 1,500 theaters this weekend, as first reported by Deadline. After 20 weeks of release and about $22 million in the box office, Moonlight is one of the lowest-grossing Best Picture winners ever. This weekend will be Moonlight’s biggest expansion, and hopefully a chance for the film to reach a wider audience and make a little more money in the process.

Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, the film follows protagonist Chiron in three different stages of his life as he navigates the world as a poor, gay black man. Paste listed Moonlight as our top film of 2016, and in his review, Andy Crump wrote that Jenkins “opts for sensation in favor of the sensational, eschewing flash and bluster while making old hat feel new again … he leads us away from navel-gazing to see the stunningly constructed drama he and his troupe have laid before us on screen.”