While Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder battles it out with The Dark Knight and Star Wars: The Clone Wars for box-office supremacy, Richie Mehta’s feel-good drama Amal quietly expands Friday after an eye-popping opening weekend in Toronto and Vancouver.

The film, about a rickshaw driver (Rupinder Nagra) who inherits a fortune, rang in $27,000 over three days, for a per-screen average of just over $9,000 for distributor Seville Pictures. It expands to one screen each in Calgary, Winnipeg and Halifax.

Amal has garnered positive reviews, with Sun Media calling it an ‘enchanting, modern fable,’ while Maclean’s says ‘it’s well worth the investment.’ The film will move to Toronto and Vancouver suburbs including Brampton, ON, Mississauga, ON and Surrey, BC on Aug. 22.

Thunder, which opened on Wednesday, rang in US$6.5 million in its first day — in line with studio expectations, according to Variety. The DreamWorks comedy, starring Stiller — who cowrote and directed — Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr., plays on roughly 3,300 North American screens, as will the animated Clone Wars, from Warner Bros.

Meanwhile, Alliance Films will open Woody Allen’s latest, the comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona, on 40 screens in all major cities. The film, which premiered at Cannes earlier this year to good reviews, stars Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson in a story about two girlfriends who become infatuated with a painter while on a holiday in Spain.

The 3D animated Fly Me to the Moon, about three young flies looking to become the first insects on the moon, bows in Toronto Friday via Seville, while KinoSmith Films opens the doc ‘Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris, about the legendary jazz singer, also in Toronto.