Warner Bros. is currently in the middle of a hot streak, achieving a historic feat by releasing six consecutive films that each grossed over $40M in their opening weekends. That streak might, sadly, come to a halt next month.
Puck’s Matt Belloni reports that, six weeks out, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is facing lower numbers than his “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Scorsese’s ‘Killers,’ an acclaimed 3.5-hour epic, had a domestic opening weekend of approximately $23M, playing in over 3,600 theaters. As it stands, the 161-minute “One Battle After Another,” which has yet to be seen by the press, is tracking at $20M–$22M.
This film is an enormous gamble. After all, PTA’s biggest hit, “There Will Be Blood,” only pulled in $76M worldwide. Sure, this new one stars Leonardo DiCaprio and is leaning heavily on an IMAX rollout, but at this point it feels like the very definition of a RISK.
More recently, PTA himself described his career and style as “box-office challenged.” Yet “One Battle After Another” will be his biggest commercial swing, with a reported budget anywhere from $150M–$175M.
It cost a big pile of dough, and die-hard PTA mavens aside, the mainstream isn’t especially interested—even with DiCaprio figuring prominently in the film’s marketing. Hopefully, the reviews are raves, and this film can be somewhat successful.
For the record, I genuinely hope it succeeds. A major-budget PTA hit could open the door for even bolder projects—both for him and for studios willing to take a chance. Nobody wants this to fail. The exciting part is that PTA basically got a blank check to make whatever he wanted.
And I love how he somehow convinced Warner Bros. to drop $175M on a Thomas Pynchon adaptation. Did they even realize the story is loosely drawn from Vineland? Maybe not. I can totally picture PTA pitching the project without ever mentioning Pynchon’s name once.