A recent feature piece over at Deadline has gone into the underwhelming box office performance of original auteur-driven adult films in recent months.
The big reveal in the piece that has got everyone talking is that after three weekends, the Luca Guadagnino-directed “After the Hunt” has been a disaster with a total gross to date of just $2.9 million domestically and $6 million worldwide.
That film had a costly $70-80 million budget, and the piece indicates that $20 million of that went on Julia Roberts’ salary.
There’s no question that a number of original films targeted at adults have all seemingly fizzled at the box office – “Caught Stealing,” “The Smashing Machine,” “After the Hunt,” “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” “Anemone,” “Kiss of the Spider-Woman,” and “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere”.
Many of those are star-driven affairs, R-rated and/or were being primed as awards contenders. The big exception, of course, is “One Battle After Another”, which has received great reviews and has been a box-office success – though its costly budget means it’s not expected to achieve profitability until well into its video/TV cycle. “Roofman,” coming in at such a cheap $19 million budget, has also fared OK.
Questions are being raised as to what happened as, compared to ten years ago, the sector for adult movies was much more robust. One specialty executive says a big issue is that “the 40- to 60-plus-aged crowd used to attend movies on a frequent basis,” the ones who would go just to go regularly, have been lost to streaming.
However, others point out that word of mouth travels a lot faster these days, and longer windows for these films very likely wouldn’t have drawn more people. In fact, a fast turnaround to digital can be the only way some of these films actually make money.
NRG also reports that windows are both expanding and contracting with 70% of studio releases making it to PVOD within 45 days these days – up from just 40% in 2022. On the flipside, the jump to SVOD (eg. Disney+, Netflix) is taking longer with 60% of titles now taking over 90 days to jump compared to just 14% in 2022.
Of course, adult speciality films aren’t the only box-office failures of late – so did Disney’s tentpole “TRON: Ares” with that film’s star Jeff Bridges asked about its performance by EW. He tells them opening weekend grosses aren’t the final word on a film’s quality or longevity:
“It’s interesting, though, how movies are received at opening weekend. I remember ‘Heaven’s Gate’ was considered, you know, very disappointing or a flop, but nowadays it’s considered kind of a masterpiece…. Even as an individual, often, I have not liked a movie. And then a couple weeks or months later, I’ll see it again. I’ll say, ‘What was I thinking?’ As the Dude would say, ‘That’s just like your opinion, man.'”
“Tron: Ares” has grossed $123.4 million globally from a $180 million budget.
