Netflix has let box office numbers out of the vault, and its first public tally belongs to La Bola Negra. While modest, the per screen average taken from four screens marks the making of history for the streamer. For a platform that has treated theatrical grosses as someone else’s business, this is more than an opening-weekend headline.

It is a small release carrying a message about how Netflix wants its films to be seen—and measured. A limited release can look modest on a multiplex marquee, but this one makes Netflix’s reluctance to share numbers part of the story.

Revealed by Netflix Tudum, this is the first time Netflix has publicly reported theatrical box office data. La Bola Negra opened on four screens. The Spanish-language drama earned $277,500 from four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, delivering a $69,375 per-screen average. The per-screen average is impressive, though the tiny footprint matters: four theaters cannot prove how the film would fare at scale.

Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, aka Los Javis, the film connects three queer men across 1932, 1937 and 2017 Spain. Their stories explore desire, pain, inheritance and repression, drawing inspiration from an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca. Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close appear in the film.

It also arrives with festival credentials. It premiered in Cannes competition, where Calvo and Ambrossi shared the Best Director award, and won the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award. Now, with even the theatrical run getting its head start, first-time box office numbers and all, the accolades make the film an awards-season bet.

‘La Bola Negra’ Keeps Its Festival Momentum Rolling With a Major Miami Film Festival Honor

But why begin this new era with a Spanish-language art-house drama instead of a guaranteed blockbuster? Netflix’s changing theatrical ambitions offer a clue.

La Bola Negra has a 47-day exclusive theatrical window before streaming, Netflix’s longest yet. Its US release began in New York and Los Angeles, with expansion possible if demand supports it. The film arrives on Netflix in the United States and Canada on December 2.

Netflix has sent films to theaters for awards eligibility or filmmaker requests without routinely publishing grosses. Now it plans to report box office results for larger upcoming titles, including David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth and Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. 

La Bola Negra is shaping up to be a test run before those wider rollouts. The numbers may be modest in scale, but the change is not. Netflix is letting its theatrical business be counted in public, one black ball at a time.

‘La Bola Negra’: Netflix Gives Spanish-Language Oscar Hopeful the Longest Theatrical Run in History

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