Napoleon is Dyn-o-mite!

On June 11, an indie flick about a high school misfit in rural Idaho premiered on six screens in New York and Los Angeles. Four months later, with a total gross exceeding $30 million, Napoleon Dynamite finally cracked the top 10 and was still expanding to theaters as far-reaching as, well, rural Idaho. In an era in which it is typical for major Hollywood films to drop 50 percent or more in box office returns by their second week of release, Napoleon has somehow managed to increase its gross with each successive week. The credit for this success belongs to an ingenious marketing strategy devised by Fox Searchlight, which has relied on word of mouth among the teen crowd to draw increasing flocks of moviegoers as the film has spread city to city at a snail’s pace.

This remarkable success came after a shaky start at January’s Sundance film festival. “From a strictly cinematic point-of-view, this film is a... zero,” declared Variety reporter Todd McCarthy after Napoleon’s world premiere. Still, Napoleon became an unexpected Sundance hit, and first-time director Jared Hess (who shot the movie for $400,000) walked away with a distribution deal from Fox Searchlight worth $3 million. But critics remained wary, referring to Napoleon as a Rushmore rip-off and predicting it would go the way of Happy, Texas, a Sundance hit from 1999 that earned less than $2 million.

Fox Searchlight, however, recognized Napoleon’s unique appeal to a youthful demographic. They struck a marketing deal with MTV Films that ultimately led to hours of free advertisement on teen-targeted shows like Total Request Live. Fox also chose to postpone the wide-release date to generate more buzz. This strategy has proved critical to the film’s staying power. At a recent screening of Napoleon in Chapel Hill, 14 weeks after the film first opened, sentiments inevitably echoed that of 20-year-old Matt Pelz, who said he came to see the film because a friend in Wednesday’s creative writing class was raving about it. Audience members over the age of 25, however, were scarce.

This word-of-mouth strategy has been tried before with other smaller features, yet it has produced mixed success. Fox Searchlight’s other Sundance acquisition, Garden State, followed a similar path, opening July 30 in nine theaters and continuing to expand to 800 over the course of the next six weeks. But despite all the hype, State currently stands at $18 million and will likely gross less than Napoleon. Ghost World and Welcome to the Dollhouse, two films similar in theme to Napoleon, both lasted over six months at the theater, but neither managed to reach more than a few-hundred screens. Napoleon Dynamite, on the other hand, will eventually be released on more than 1,200 screens. Having returned 7,750 percent on its budget and counting, Hess’s bargain creation stands to become one of the most profitable films in indie history.

So, head to the theatres and see Napoleon Dynamite, but don’t bother to run, it’ll probably be there for another couple of months.