Paul Thomas Anderson’s new thriller One Battle After Another has topped the box office on its opening weekend, but analysts remain divided about whether the film will prove profitable.
The film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an aging revolutionary, has so far banked $22.4 million in the US.
It also made another $26.1 million internationally, for a global tally of $48.5 million.
However, the film is expected to need to make around $300 million to just break even. It was made for a reported budget of around $130m, and will also need to cover marketing costs and pay theatre operators.
David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research told Variety: “This movie has a chance of getting to profitability if it lasts long enough in theaters and/or overperforms abroad. It’s going to get a lot of awards nominations, but that’s two to three months away and unlikely to help this immediate release.”
Writing for The Independent, Louis Chilton assessed why the film could flop despite being regarded as the year’s must-see film.
Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘One Battle After Another’ (Warner Bros)
“For much of the past several months, there has been widespread scepticism as to whether One Battle will be able to recoup its blockbuster budget,” wrote Chilton. “Anderson has always inspired a devoted, borderline fanatical, fanbase, but never the mainstream following of a Nolan or a Tarantino. (There Will Be Blood, his biggest film to date, made just over $76m.)
“DiCaprio’s involvement in One Battle is undoubtedly a selling point, but just how much remains unclear. Since winning his Oscar in 2016, the Revenant star has acted in just three features: one hit (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), one commercial flop (Killers of the Flower Moon) and one for Netflix (Don’t Look Up).”
The film has been rapturously received by critics, with The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey giving the film five stars.
“This is, in short, Anderson’s action epic,” wrote Loughrey. “It opens with the blistering, capital ‘C’ Cinema image of Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, magnificent in every scene she inhabits) as she struts into an immigration detention centre –righteous fury in her muscles, looking like she stands about 12 feet tall –declaring to a humiliated Colonel Steven J Lockjaw (Sean Penn), ‘this is an announcement of a motherf***ing revolution.’”
She concluded: “For all of One Battle After Another’s formalist pleasures – its humour, its pace, its grandeur – what feels the most striking about it, in this apocalyptic now, is the hope that it chooses to leave us with. Every battle, out on the streets and inside hearts, will have been worth it one day.”
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