A24's Anthony Bourdain biopic "Tony" has turned into one of the specialty box office's biggest surprises of the summer, expanding to 1,642 theaters this past weekend and landing at No. 7 on the national chart with an estimated $5 million gross, according to Deadline's specialty box office report. The film's three-week cumulative total now stands at roughly $6.6 million, a striking figure for a release that opened on fewer than 40 screens in early August.
Directed by Matt Johnson and written with Todd Bartels, Lou Howe and Matthew Miller, "Tony" imagines the summer of 1975 when a 19-year-old Bourdain, having just washed out of a writing fellowship, talked his way into a dishwashing job at a Provincetown, Massachusetts, seafood restaurant. Dominic Sessa, best known for "The Holdovers," plays the future chef and television host; Antonio Banderas plays the restaurant's imperious chef, José Vatel, who becomes an early mentor. The film follows Bourdain through a chaotic kitchen apprenticeship that ends, per the film's account, with a grease fire and a recommendation letter to the Culinary Institute of America.
A Rare Critical Consensus
The reception has matched the box office. "Tony" holds a 94% approval rating from critics and a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a "Certified Fresh" rating built on nearly 200 reviews.
Exploring how the iconic Anthony Bourdain came to be with a scrappy coming-of-age story that's equal parts sweet and tart, Tony is a splendid tribute to mentorship, complete with a standout performance by Antonio Banderas.
Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus
IndieWire's review singled out Sessa's performance for capturing Bourdain's restlessness without slipping into hagiography, a balance that has helped the film draw older moviegoers familiar with Bourdain's television career alongside younger audiences discovering him through Sessa.
A24 has treated the release as a slow-build platform campaign rather than a conventional wide opening: a six-theater debut in New York and Los Angeles on August 7 was followed by staged expansions before the film went wide on August 21. That patience appears to have paid off. Coming three weeks after its limited bow, "Tony" is now drawing crowds well beyond the arthouse audience that turned out opening weekend — a notable outcome for a film built around a chef who died in 2018 and whose loyal television and literary following the studio was betting would translate to theaters.
