An art-house awards contender is not supposed to outsell Spider-Man in its own country. La Bola Negra, the queer epic that directing duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi built from an unfinished Federico García Lorca text, has sold more tickets in Spain this year than any other film, Hollywood franchises included. It goes into Oscar season as that rare international-feature hopeful able to point to a crowd as well as a jury.

As Deadline reported, citing Rentrak data, the drama is now Spain’s highest-grossing local release of the year, having overtaken Santiago Segura’s Torrente Presidente a few weekends ago. It is a big win for Elastica, the young independent Spanish distributor, and proof that a story about three gay men in different eras, bound together by desire, pain and inheritance, can play like a mainstream event.

The numbers are hefty for a Spanish-language period drama. La Bola Negra has taken $41 million in Spain and $43.4 million worldwide, against the $31.6 million Torrente Presidente managed, and Elastica counts 5.5 million admissions, the most for any title in Spain this year. With €36.7 million, it has entered Spain’s all-time top ten at No. 10, a chart led by Avatar on €77 million. Only two local productions have earned more: the 2014 comedy Spanish Affair (€56.2 million) and J.A. Bayona’s English-language The Impossible (€42.5 million).

Tickets and takings tell slightly different stories. In calendar-year grosses, La Bola Negra still ranks third, behind Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day (€40.4 million) and Universal’s The Odyssey (€39.5 million). It opened on September 25, during Spain’s Fiesta del Cine, when every ticket was discounted to €3.50, and it was No. 1 again in its sixth weekend with $1.4 million.

Netflix, which bought U.S. rights for a reported $5 million, has just begun reporting theatrical grosses for its films in North America. Its platform release opened on October 16 in four New York and Los Angeles theaters with $277,500, a $69,300 average per theater that is the highest opening average ever for a Spanish-language film in the U.S. and the second-highest for any non-English film. After three weekends at 38 locations, the North American total stands at $1.2 million.

The awards résumé is long: Best Director at Cannes for the pair known as Los Javis, the People’s Choice Award in Toronto, a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best International Independent Film, and a Vanguard Tribute at the Gotham Awards, where Guitarricadelafuente is also up for Breakthrough Performer. The cast includes Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close. France gets the film on December 16; Australia and New Zealand have added an estimated $300,000.

Rentrak has Spain on course for its best box-office year since 2019, running 40% ahead of 2025 with admissions up 36%. The film selling the most tickets in that recovery is not a franchise sequel but a Lorca-inspired queer drama, and it is the same film Spain is sending to the Oscars.