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The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2010. As the opening film it garnered a standing ovation and the day after its screening, Portman was already being tipped as a serious Oscar contender. As it continued to play the festivals, early word was spreading about Portman’s performance. That she used to dance before moving into acting meant that she was able to familiarize herself with ballet. She did “many” of the dance scenes herself, having trained five hours a day for ten months. Kunis, who is often overshadowed, also trained for five hours a day for six months.

Opening in the US on December 3, 2010 in a limited release of just 18 screens, Black Swan played to mostly sold out shows and earned a remarkable $1.4 million, charting at #13. An expansion to 90 theatres in its second week allowed the film to enter the top ten at #6 with a fantastic take of $3.3 million. Word-of-mouth was spreading faster than a Kardashian’s legs. Those interested were not waiting for the film to show locally. Here was an instance where some people were going out of their way to watch it. In its third week, Black Swan finally opened wide. Out to 959 locations it was down at #7, but its weekend take had increased to $8.3 million.

The film had broken through to the multiplexes and spent nine weeks in the US top ten, crossing the $100 million mark on its twelfth week of release. It ended its run with $106.9 million at the US box office. And here’s something no one could have predicted - for Fox, the domestic total made it their highest grossing film of 2010 in the US, for despite the R-rating it surpassed the likes of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, The A-Team, and Knight & Day.

It also found huge success overseas, notably in the UK, France, Germany and Japan, with the film earning over $20 million in each of those countries. Adding in an overseas gross of $222.4 million, Black Swan had managed to earn $329 million worldwide, making it one of Fox Searchlight’s highest grossing films. It is also Darren Aronofsky’s most successful film by a huge margin. So how did this happen?

The first trailer for the film emerged over three months earlier in August. When Fox Searchlight uploaded it to YouTube it had received just over three million views within the space of 48 hours. The trailers, TV spots and posters all exude a sense of mystery and intrigue, enough to make you want to know what the hell is going on. Yet for some people, even after watching the film, they were still struggling to piece together what they had just seen.

Black Swan is intricately designed and plays like a puzzle. Everything is deliberate as Aronofsky screws with his audience (he revealed that the faces of his lead actresses are sometimes digitally swapped for a split second). There is a lot that one can deeply analyse; with its emphasis on mirrors, which are in almost every scene (note what happens when Nina finally breaks a mirror), the color scheme (interestingly it opens in black and fades to white), even the end credits, which offer a clue when we see that each of the main cast is credited as playing two characters. With an unstable Nina in pretty much every scene, this means that the viewer only ever knows as much as she does. For those that really wanted to decipher the film it would mean watching it again, and multiple viewings were reported as some went a second and third time. It would also mean chatting to those that have seen it and getting their interpretation. Cue a lot of people asking, “Have you seen Black Swan? You need to see Black Swan! You really need to see Black Swan!”

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