Puck’s Matt Belloni has a fascinating new study out this week, one that questions whether Leonardo DiCaprio—the last true “prestige movie star”—can still deliver the kind of box office numbers that once made him Hollywood’s most bankable actor.
His latest project, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” is shaping up to be the ultimate stress test for DiCaprio’s enduring star power. The $150M+ political satire (Warners insists the budget is closer to $130–140M, but many whisper higher) runs two hours and 40 minutes, is R-rated, and comes from a filmmaker who has never cracked $76M at the box office. The question hanging over the industry: Can even DiCaprio get audiences to show up for this?
Belloni paints the scene well: summer’s over, and DiCaprio is heavily doing the publicity rounds for PTA’s priciest gamble yet. He’s notoriously press-averse, but Warner Bros. clearly knows the stakes—he’s already appeared in Esquire (interviewed by Anderson, not a journalist) and the studio gave the film a nearly three-week runway after its Los Angeles premiere before the September 26 release. Still, early tracking has the film opening at just $20M, which would be catastrophic given the investment.
That’s where Puck’s study comes in, via Greenlight Analytics. DiCaprio’s awareness remains sky-high at 86 percent (99th percentile among actors), with strong marks for “good actor” (71 percent), “likable” (61 percent), and “authentic” (58 percent). His fandom score is an impressive 60 percent, and 37 percent of respondents said they’d pay to see him in theaters. However, the data also exposes cracks: his “trendy” score sits at 48 percent, and nearly a quarter of respondents consider him overrated. Younger audiences under 35, in particular, are less inclined to see his films theatrically.
Compared to peers, DiCaprio remains one of the most respected actors alive—ranking ahead of Denzel Washington and Brad Pitt in “good actor” perception—but he lags behind broader-appeal stars like Dwayne Johnson when it comes to raw theatrical pull. His lack of social media presence and his refusal to touch I.P. or superhero franchises keeps him in a rarefied lane, but also limits his reach with younger moviegoers.
This wouldn’t matter as much if DiCaprio’s films were consistently profitable. But recent box office history tells a different story: “Killers of the Flower Moon” topped out at $158M worldwide, despite the Scorsese team-up. A decade earlier, “J. Edgar” barely made $80M worldwide on a $35M budget, despite the Clint Eastwood pairing.
Belloni’s takeaway? DiCaprio is still the “unicorn”—arguably the last star whose name alone can carry a prestige non-IP picture—but his box office ceiling has lowered. If “One Battle After Another” performs like “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Warner Bros. could be looking at another “prestige flop.”
The larger question is whether DiCaprio needs to recalibrate. Does he continue his one-for-one auteur strategy, or start balancing them with more mainstream genre films (“Inception”) or ensemble projects (“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”)? His legacy is secure. But as he turns 50, even DiCaprio may need to rethink how to sustain his drawing power in a theatrical landscape that’s increasingly hostile to expensive, original adult dramas.
Cory Finley, a talented filmmaker, has directed three films so far: "Thoroughbreds" (2017), "Bad Education” (2020), and "Landscape with Invisible Hand.”