“The Brutalist” won some of the top prizes at Sunday night’s Golden Globes, taking home the awards for best drama, best director and best actor in a drama. But it is exceptionally difficult for people to watch the story of the fictional Hungarian architect László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody, who tries to realize his grand vision in postwar America.
Other contenders this awards season, like Netflix’s “Emilia Pérez,” which won several Golden Globes, have comfortable homes on streaming services for audiences to watch at their leisure. “The Brutalist,” which is distributed by A24 and has a three-and-a-half-hour run time (including a 15-minute onscreen intermission), is accessible only in a few theaters.
The movie will not release nationwide until Jan. 17 before expanding to a wider release on Jan. 24, said a person with knowledge of A24’s distribution plans.
Where can I watch ‘The Brutalist’?
If you don’t live in Los Angeles or New York, your chances of seeing the film before then are, well, brutal.
Even in those cities, which often have theatrical releases before the rest of the country, the options to watch are limited. Screenings are currently scheduled at three theaters in New York and five in Los Angeles.
You may find some luck at art house cinemas across the country. Viewers in Doylestown, Pa., a major setting in “The Brutalist,” can drive to Philadelphia for two screening options at art houses.
(And if you happen to be an Oscars voter who needs to catch up before the period for nominations begins on Wednesday, “The Brutalist” is on your screener app.)
Is ‘The Brutalist’ streaming?
Not yet. While A24 has a deal with Warner Bros. to make Max the streaming home for its releases, there has been no announcement for the date when “The Brutalist” will come to the platform. The wait to watch at home may be a while, considering how long it has taken other A24 movies to arrive on Max: Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” released theatrically in April 2024, only made its way to streaming by September.
Why is ‘The Brutalist’ in so few theaters?
“The Brutalist,” which was directed by Brady Corbet, received a limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 20, a tested strategy to help critical darlings build their appeal with mass audiences. “Parasite,” which won best picture at the Academy Awards in 2020, opened at three theaters before hitting a peak of 2,001 theaters in the weeks after the Oscars. (By comparison, the blockbuster “Deadpool & Wolverine” opened in 4,210 theaters in July.)
In New York and Los Angeles, only two theaters screen “The Brutalist” with its intended 70-millimeter film format, the analog presentation that matches the midcentury VistaVision camera technology used to shoot the film in high resolution and with a wide field of view to capture its expansive architecture.
Last year’s closest analogue to “The Brutalist” is probably Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” another midcentury “great man” drama whose run time also hit the three-hour mark. But “Oppenheimer,” which won the best picture Oscar, opened in thousands of theaters and catapulted to summer-blockbuster status thanks in part to the box office lift of the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon.
What other awards-season movies are elusive?
Fernanda Torres won a Golden Globe for best actress in a drama for her performance in “I’m Still Here,” about a family torn apart by a military junta that ruled Brazil for decades. Other than film festival attendees and awards voters, few in the United States have seen “I’m Still Here,” which releases in New York and Los Angeles on Jan. 17.
“Nickel Boys,” a critically acclaimed adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel about an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida, has also been difficult to access. The movie, directed by RaMell Ross and distributed by Amazon MGM Studios, opened in mid-December but is still in fewer than 20 theaters and has no official streaming release date.
