‘Klara and the Sun' Averaged $17 Per Theater This Week, Sony Stops Tracking Box Office Receipts

Taika Waititi. The man is lost. His "Klara and the Sun" is heading into just its third weekend in theaters, and Sony is no longer tracking the title, which has scraped together roughly $1.2M domestic. The budget? That depends on who you ask. Sony originally pegged it at $20M, but it's now being reported at $40M. Given how studios try to lowball costs, I'd bet on the latter being the actual figure.

Now here's Showbiz411's Roger Friedman, who is reporting the actual numbers Sony has been hiding from us. According to him, "Klara" has averaged a dismal $17 per theater across only a handful of venues. That's not a typo. That's what Friedman is saying.

The reviews have been harsh, though I still haven't seen the film. It debuted at No. 15 at the U.S. box office, earning just $720,000 in fewer than 1,000 locations. Things only got worse from there: the second weekend brought in a measly $145,000. That's when Sony decided to stop publishing box office figures for the film altogether. The studio also decided to restrict the movie's international rollout.

Then came the meltdown. On Halloween, Waititi posted the film's Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 78% and used the occasion to torch the critical establishment. He asked followers to spare a thought for the "sad lost souls" who failed to become artists and thus became critics. He went further, claiming these were the same people who hated "Jojo Rabbit," before dismissing them: "Irrelevant. Out of touch. Obsolete. In the bin."

You'd think a guy who doesn't read reviews wouldn't sound quite so wounded by them. And for the record, that Popcornmeter score he was waving around was based on a mere "100+" verified ratings. Meanwhile, critics have it at a dismal 26%, making it the worst-reviewed movie of Waititi's career.

That's the bigger story, for me at least. After "Thor: Love and Thunder" and "Next Goal Wins," this is the third dud in a row for a filmmaker who, not that long ago, was an Oscar winner with a blank check. Attacking critics certainly won't help him get the next one financed.

For Sony, it's another October surprise, in the worst possible way. Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Reckoning" flopped with a $5.5M opening and was pulled from nearly 2,000 theaters across North America within weeks. Thank goodness they had Spider-Man. "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," now the third-highest-grossing movie in history, will offset some of the losses, but Waititi is the big loser here.