Throughout June, The Salt Path, a UK production with a budget understood to be under $10m, has been out-performing Mission: Impossible 8 and Ballerina on certain days in UK and Irish cinemas.
Two weeks after its UK and Ireland release on May 30 by Black Bear UK, the film had generated an impressive £6m ($8.2m) and counting.
The Salt Path is the feature debut of UK theatre director Marianne Elliott and stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs as a real-life couple who are faced with sudden homelessness and a terminal health diagnosis. It is based on the memoir of the same name by Raynor Winn, which was optioned and produced by Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley’s Number 9 Films alongside Lloyd Levin and Beatriz Levin.
The film follows the husband and wife on an epic 630-mile walking trek along the Cornish, Devon and Dorset coastline. “It is the most successful film we have had at Number 9,” says Woolley, whose credits at the company include Living and The Assessment.
At £1.4m, the film’s opening weekend figures are among the highest Black Bear has achieved on any of its UK releases so far, matching Longlegs (£1.4m) and surpassing Bafta and Oscar winner Conclave (£1.1m).
Festival launch
The Salt Path, to which Rocket Science has international rights, made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024. While the critical response at the time was mixed, the TIFF audience reaction told a different story.
“We really felt the phenomenal response. People were just on their feet at the end,” recalls Karlsen.
Karlsen and Woolley worked with Black Bear to find the right UK-Ireland release date. Spring 2025 became the preferred window, to chime with the film’s celebration of nature, “the outdoors, the enjoyment and beauty that comes from being outside,” says Karlsen.
https://www.screendaily.com/features/selling-the-salt-path-how-international-distributors-are-turning-the-uk-film-into-a-box-office-hit/5206233.article
“We knew we wanted to release preferably in the spring because it was a time when people go out walking after a long winter. But we knew we couldn’t go too late because we wanted to have a run before the summer holidays started,” the producer continues. “We were also nervous that if we had an incredible heatwave, that might be problematic.”
(In fact, a heatwave did hit the UK for weeks three and four of the film’s release, but as of June 20 has reached the point where UK cinemagoers may now be looking for a cool escape from the rays.)
The UK release date was originally scheduled for April 25 but was postponed a few weeks to May 30.
“We were looking very specifically [for a date] in terms of British series that would work for an older audience,” explains Llewellyn Radley, UK managing director at Black Bear, which boarded the project at script stage. “The late May date was a good distance in time from anything else that felt like it was serving a similar audience.”
The film arrived in UK cinemas in a half-term holiday week when screens were dominated by either children’s films or action series. Its only potential competitor was Universal’s comedy drama The Battle Of Wallis Island.
Promotional strategy
The Salt Path has performed especially well outside London, both in independent cinemas and in multiplexes, and has appealed especially to an older female audience.
Black Bear made the most of author Winn and the film’s two lead actors. Anderson and Isaacs – hot off his performance in season three of HBO’s hit series The White Lotus – appeared on popular mainstream TV shows The One Show and This Morning, boosting awareness of the serie with the target audience.
Anderson and Isaacs have also done “significant radio” interviews, notes Radley. Isaacs appeared on the Nick Grimshaw and Jo Whiley shows on BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 2, respectively, while Anderson participated in Vernon Kay’s Tracks Of My Years on Radio 2 and This Cultural Life on BBC Radio 4. There were also interviews in print publications includingThe Big Issue, Empire, Glamour magazine and Radio Times. Isaacs appeared on popular film-focused podcasts including Kermode & Mayo’s Take.
Black Bear held sold-out Q&A screenings in multiple cinemas around the UK from Clevedon near Bristol to the London Barbican.
Prior to release, Black Bear worked closely with publisher Penguin, which published a tie-in edition of Winn’s book and provided information on regional sales that informed where the distributor focused some marketing efforts. An in-conversation event at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts with Winn, director Elliott, screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Karlsen had a reported audience of 1,500.
Furthermore, Black Bear and exhibitor Everyman held special previews of the film in aid of homelessness and housing charity Shelter. The distributor collaborated with organisations such as maps specialists Ordnance Survey, walkers’ charity South West Coast Path Association (SWCPA), and retailer, Mountain Warehouse.
Black Bear opened The Salt Path on 525 screens throughout the UK and Ireland. In the second week, the film expanded to 603 screens, and then expanded again the following week to 661 screens – with takings at London cinemas increasing as word of mouth “filtered”, as Karlsen puts it, back into the city.
International success
Before opening in the UK and Ireland, The Salt Path was already a hit in Netherlands where the book had been a bestseller. Following its opening on May 1, it has outperformed recent releases such as Walter Salles’ Oscar-winning I’m Still Here and Jason Statham action title The Beekeeper for distributor The Searchers. It is forecast to gross at least $4m by the end of its run in the territory.
“It would be so easy to say that The Salt Path addresses an older ‘boomer’ audience but what we are seeing is the audience is much younger than we expected,” says Olivier Van den Broeck, head of strategy at The Searchers.
In Australia and New Zealand, Transmission Films released The Salt Path on May 15, with p&a support from the UK Global Screen Fund. Despite the book being less well-known in the market, the film has resonated with an aspirational older demographic interested in reconnecting with nature, reveal Transmission joint managing directors Andrew Mackie and Richard Payten.
“We intentionally highlighted themes of later-life adventure, romance, and authentic living, rather than focusing on the more serious aspects of the story,” they explain. “Our strategy involved building on this grassroots audience and engaging mature nature and lifestyle influencers who valued authenticity.”
Transmission Films expects The Salt Path to reach $2.4m (AU$3.7m).
The next major territory to walk The Salt Path will be Germany where the film is due to premiere at the Munich International Film Festival in early July as part of a tribute to Gillian Anderson. DCM will release it wide on July 17.
Rocket Science is now hoping to close a North American deal on the back of the box-office success. “We have new offers for the US,” said a Rocket Science spokesperson. “Distributors have seen the appetite for the aspirational film and how the campaigns have clicked for the older audience. We expect to conclude a deal in the coming weeks for releases in Q4.”
A Bafta awards campaign is now also under serious consideration, while Black Bear’s Radley expects The Salt Path to stay on screens for several weeks.
“I am not going to say what I think the film will do. That is hard to forecast with the environment at the moment,” he says. “But we are very happy with the performance of the film and certainly feel that with series for this audience, series of this genre, you typically see there is a significant long tail to their performance in theatres.”
“The Salt Path appeals to an aspirational audience, perhaps those who dream of undertaking such a journey themselves, and a trip to the cinema offers a way to scratch that itch,” suggests Transmission’s Mackie.
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