‘Wuthering Heights’ Underperforms? $38M 4-Day Weekend Expected [Updated]

UPDATE: Things are not looking too good for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” at least when compared to the $50M opening that seemed practically locked just a few days ago.

Fennell’s divisive romance tallied $8M on Friday — not good. Warner Bros. is praying that an onslaught of ticket buyers will show up today for Valentine’s Day. Otherwise, the film is currently looking at $38-$40M for the four-day weekend.

Now, that’s a pretty good number for an R-rated Brontë adaptation—in fact, it’s performing better than it had any right to—but those amazing presales that led many to expect $50M have not translated into stellar walk-ups.

EARLIER: Those “Wuthering Heights” reviews might have slightly tamped down its box office prospects. As you know, critics are very mixed on this movie, which has a 57 on Metacritic and 65% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Early word is that “Wuthering Heights,” which as late as yesterday was being projected by the trades to have a $50–$55M opening, won’t be hitting that mark. On Thursday, it earned only $3M in previews and is now eyeing $40M over the holiday weekend, which stretches through Monday.

Just to put things into perspective: most recently, “Send Help” had a $3M Thursday, and went on to have a $21M weekend — albeit I expect “Wuthering Heights” to have a higher tally due to an inevitable Valentine’s Day bump on Saturday.

Furthermore, a Puck report has Warner Bros. spending a whopping $85M on marketing “Wuthering Heights,” and it shows—the promo for this film has been all hands on deck, with stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi leading the charge.

Here’s the issue for this film: it also cost $80M to produce, and with that $85M marketing spend added in, “Wuthering Heights” will need to tally around $330M+ worldwide to break even. Doable? Sure. But word of mouth will have to be strong for this one to have legs at the box office.

What’s even more worrisome is that the international numbers don’t look any better — it won’t make more than $30M overseas this weekend, and that’s a generous number to begin with. It doesn’t help that reviews in Europe have been quite bad, especially in France where the film is being ridiculed by critics.

Regardless, we’ll be keeping an eye out on this one, and as mentioned, a V-Day bump is incoming, so not all is lost at the moment, but things have started out rather grimly for this film.