Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:
Simple: it's most likely a marketing strategy . The two tactics employed are called either limited release, or platform release . Limited release is when a movie is released to a limited number of theaters in an effort to gauge the appeal a film may have to a wider audience. Platform release is when they release a film to see what kind of word of mouth it generates as well as marketing buzz, in addition to its per-theater gross. The movie earns good buzz with audiences and has a high per-theater gross? They'll look to gradually expand the number of theaters it's in. This tactic requires careful planning, though, as pushing the movie to too many theaters too soon could lower the per-theater...
Full answer by MattD: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/26926 (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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