Netflix publicly disclosed box office grosses for the first time in its history on Sunday, revealing that its historical epic “La Bola Negra” earned $277,500 from four theaters in its opening weekend, according to IndieWire. The film’s per-screen average of $69,375 ranks as the second-highest ever for a non-English language release.
The disclosure marks a shift for a company that has long kept its theatrical numbers close to the vest, even as it pushed films into limited release for awards qualification.
What Netflix Disclosed About La Bola Negra
“La Bola Negra” opened in a limited run across New York and Los Angeles, playing on just four screens. The $69,375 per-screen average puts it near the top of the all-time list for non-English language films, according to IndieWire.
Netflix also released demographic data tied to the opening. More than half of the opening weekend crowd, 51%, was under age 35, and ticket buyers between 25 and 34 made up the single largest group at 39%. Netflix attributed that turnout to the film’s focus on gay history, saying the subject matter resonated with younger audiences.
Netflix picked up “La Bola Negra” at the Cannes Film Festival for roughly $5 million, and the film is already being viewed as a major Oscar contender.
What The Netflix Box Office Reporting Means For Fans
For years, Netflix released awards-season films exclusively in theaters for several weeks to satisfy Oscar eligibility rules, but it never officially reported how those runs performed. The streamer briefly lifted the veil on numbers for “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” but that disclosure was never made official either. This time is different. Netflix confirmed it will now publicly report box office results for future theatrical releases, giving fans and industry watchers a clearer picture of how its awards-season films perform on the big screen before they hit streaming.
Context Behind The Shift
The new transparency arrives as Netflix lines up a slate of theatrical releases from high-profile directors, including David Fincher, Greta Gerwig, Taika Waititi, Peter Berg and Danny Boyle. Those upcoming films will get theatrical windows of roughly a month or more, a notable expansion from the brief qualifying runs Netflix has used in the past. A longer window typically means access to more screens, which could give fans in more markets a chance to catch these titles in theaters rather than waiting for them to arrive on the service.
What’s Next
Netflix has not detailed specific release dates for the upcoming films from Fincher, Gerwig, Waititi, Berg and Boyle, but the extended theatrical windows signal a broader rollout than “La Bola Negra” received. With Netflix now reporting grosses as a matter of course, each new release will offer a direct comparison point for how the company’s theatrical strategy is evolving. Readers interested in Netflix’s broader slate can check out Netflix’s October 2026 lineup and the studio’s recent staffing changes for more on where the company stands heading into awards season.
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