The Dog Stars: Ridley Scott's quiet apocalypse is on at 89 Malaysian cinemas, wider than anything but the blockbusters

Only four films in Malaysia are on more screens this week than a two-hour drama about a pilot, a survivalist and a widow at the end of the world. The Dog Stars, Ridley Scott's film of Peter Heller's novel, is at 89 of the 125 cinemas in this site's listings for 4 to 10 September, with 1,107 sessions across all seven chains and 13 states, behind only Chelot, Insidious: Out of the Further, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and All Wishes Come True!. It opened here on 27 August, a day before the United States and the United Kingdom, and its second week is as wide as its first.

Colorado, 2035

Screen Daily's review, by Tim Grierson on 26 August, sets the story in Colorado in 2035, after a flu epidemic has killed most of the world's population. Jacob Elordi is Hig, keeping a small plane and a life going at an airfield alongside Josh Brolin's Bangley, a survivalist with a gun for every occasion, until Margaret Qualley's Cima, a widow, and her father Pops, played by Guy Pearce, enter the story. Allison Janney and Benedict Wong support. Mark L. Smith wrote the screenplay from Heller's 2012 novel, the running time is 118 minutes, and 20th Century Studios releases it through Disney. Grierson's verdict is measured: the film has, he writes, an "understated warmth", and its director draws out the intimate moments between characters that speak to larger ideas about survival, even where the execution is, in his word, wobbly.

The chains' own synopsis says much the same in fewer words: a man living a lonesome existence in a Colorado aeroplane hangar after a pandemic, on a journey of survival, grit and hope. The listings give it a 16 classification and 118 minutes.

A modest opening, a wide release

Screen Daily's UK preview on 28 August had Disney opening the film in 631 cinemas there, and set that against Scott's recent openings: Gladiator II in 722 sites for an £8.8 million first weekend and £32 million in all, Napoleon in 716, House of Gucci in 685 and The Last Duel in 440. The global result, in Screen Daily's report two days later, was a $19.3 million debut: $11.3 million from 49 international territories and $8 million in North America. That is a small number next to the films above it in the Malaysian listings, and the width of the release here says something about how the chains read a Ridley Scott name and a Jacob Elordi one.

Where it is, and when

The chains have given it every kind of hall. Most of this week's 1,107 sessions are in standard 2D and Deluxe halls, but the listings also have it in TGV's Beanieplex and Indulge halls, in cabin and Velvet halls, and in Dolby Atmos, and 87 of the sessions start after 10pm, which suits a film whose best scenes, by Grierson's account, are two people talking. At 118 minutes a 9:30pm show is over before midnight.

The Dog Stars page lists every cinema carrying it, ordered from the Klang Valley outward, and the showtimes page puts each cinema's times side by side. Thursday is when the chains reallocate, and a film this wide in week two rarely stays this wide in week three, so this week is the one with a session near you.