As I noted yesterday, conservative film blog Libertas is trying to push the meme that Sicko is a box office failure. To quote directly from the source:

Sicko [is] now taking in around the same per screen as the disaster License To Wed…Between the theatre and Moore\’s take, this looks to be a big-time money loser for the distributors and a stunning rebuke of Moore who no longer seems capable of convincing even the millions who agree with him to sit through two hours of his lies and obfuscations.

Obviously, this writer wants Sicko to fail, so no matter what the actual data says, he’s going to spin it to make his case (sound familiar?) But just for the sake of argument, lets take a look at evidence on both sides.

Sicko is a huge failure!!!

By this point in its release Fahrenheit 9/11 had grossed six times Sicko’s current take (although, it was also playing on over twice as many screens). Though the film opened undeniably strong, from week-to-week, Sicko’s per screen average has dropped dramatically, indicating that the pic has limited appeal beyond Moore’s choir.

As for the assertion that the doc is doing about as well as a certain Robin Williams trainwreck: according to the latest numbers from Box Office Mojo, Sicko’s daily per screen average is actually about 20 percent higher than that of License to Wed, although as both films are making far less than $1,000 per screen per day, that discrepancy currently only accounts for about a $100 each weekday. So yeah, it’s close. But…

Sicko is a huge hit!!!

…is it fair to compare the box office take of a documentary showing on 700 screens to a heavily-hyped, star-studded blockbuster wannabe booked at almost 4 times as many theaters?

At indieWIRE, Steve Ramos looks at Sicko’s gross in a different context: its success in relation to other high-profile documentaries, and amongst other sub-1000 screen releases. “It took the global warming film An Inconvenient Truth around six weeks to earn $11 million by early July 2006, a mark Sicko surpassed in just three weeks of release.” Apparently working off of these numbers for weekend gross, Ramos notes that in its third week, Sicko remained by far the smallest release in the overall top ten.

According to indieWIRE’s box office chart, which is based on Rentrak data and is limited only to “specialty” releases, Sicko is the highest grossing indie film currently in the market by a large margin. It’s #6 when ranked by per screen average amongst other indies, but it’s also playing on over 40 times as many screens as any other picture in the top ten.

Final verdict: As an indie film and as a documentary, Sicko is doing well, but it’s hardly looking like the mainstream phenomenon that Moore’s last two films became. Considering Moore’s star power, Sicko’s considerable marketing budget in relation to other indie films, and the fact that Moore’s last movie is the highest grossing documentary of all time, it is, so far, an unquestionable disappointment.