Wide release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing nationally (as opposed to a few cinemas in cities such as New York and Los Angeles). Specifically, a movie is considered to be in wide release when it is on 600 screens or more in the United States and Canada.
In the US, films holding an NC-17 rating almost never have a wide release. Showgirls (1995) is one of the rare films with an NC-17 to get one.
The term is sometimes used informally in relative terms. For example, a documentary or art film promoter might speak of a film expanding from a few New York and Los Angeles screens to cinemas in major cities across the U.S. as moving into "wide release" even though it might be playing on single screens in as few as 15 or 20 major cities.
Famous quotes containing the words wide and/or release:
“There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)