The first question you need to ask yourself is, how in the hell did Universal’s ”She Said” cost $32M? There’s barely any stars in it, no special effects and the locations primarily take place in and around New York City.
What unfolded this past weekend is very concerning regarding smartly executed mature dramas. “She Said” just made $2.2M in over 2,000 theaters — the worst performance from a major studio release this year.
It’s not fun to witness this. Almost every Oscar contender this fall has underwhelmed at the box-office. Studios are taking note of this post-pandemic phenomenon, and all these great movies not making any money at the box-office. Do you really expect these same investors to greenlight more original stories if they run the risk of not recuperating their budget?
Variety’s Brett Lang is ringing the alarm as well. Going as far as to say that prestige movies “may no longer have a commercial reason for existing, at least as theatrical propositions”. Getting nominated for Oscars is one thing, but, at the end of the day, studios want to make their investments back.
If I had to predict the fate of smart adult dramas it’s that they will almost all get produced by streamers within the next decade. Netflix, Amazon and Apple will lead the way. The pandemic and streaming have all but killed theatrically-released adult dramas. The outlook is depressing. Now it’ll be interesting to see how well “The Fabelmans” does when it gets widely released this coming Wednesday.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.