Finally, Warner Bros‘ audacious $140 million swing, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another, opens this weekend. It is expected to reach a $20 million-$25 million domestic take and another $25M abroad for a $50M worldwide debut on the high end.
Should the movie hit those numbers, or even if, God forbid, the movie’s domestic start is in the high teens, it will still rep Anderson’s biggest opening ever at the box office, even on a global basis. The 11-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker has typically had his canon platformed; the best U.S./domestic weekend ever for an Anderson movie was 2009’s There Will Be Blood, which did $4.8M in its fifth session at 855 theaters.
Everything about this movie has been bold, from its notoriety as the biggest budget for Anderson movie to its shoot in VistaVision and skipping the fall film festival troika for an awards-season launch. Still, it is rallying a 98% fresh critics score on Rotten Tomatoes in what has been arguably the most hotly buzzed title for Oscar season. For Warner Bros, the DiCaprio movie is a marathon, not a sprint. Props here to the studio at least for making a big-budget movie in the state of California, particularly on the Pearblossom Highway outside L.A.
A box office win here will continue to underscore the brilliance of the water tower studio with original fare this year after Sinners and Weapons. If it’s a miss, there isn’t any crying over spilt milk. The Warner Bros feature slate will still be profitable for calendar-year 2025, and can withstand the impact should One Battle After Another come up short in its theatrical window.
For the Michael De Luca- and Pam Abdy-run motion picture administration, the Anderson-DiCaprio socio-political action movie was a gamble worth taking. When it comes to getting in business with an auteur and DiCaprio, One Battle After Another‘s budget is lower than the actor’s previous Martin Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, at $200M, and it’s right around the Oscar-winning actor’s Western The Revenant at $135M. Not to mention, One Battle After Another was bought at auction. If Warners didn’t buy the movie at this level, another studio or streamer would have.
No matter where One Battle After Another settles, it’s primed to be Anderson’s highest-grossing movie ever even if it’s slow out of the gates. It will overtake the top spot currently held by 2007’s period drama There Will Be Blood, which made $40.2M domestic and $76.4M worldwide.
What One Battle After Another has going for it aside from the Anderson devotees is DiCaprio, DiCaprio, DiCaprio, who is out in full force doing interviews at red carpet premieres, the Kelce brothers’ podcast and sitting down with Jimmy Fallon (the first time he has sat down at The Tonight Show since 2006, when Jay Leno was hosting). One of the reasons why the movie was greenlit at its production cost is because the DiCaprio has the tendency to deliver huge openings for the auteurs he works with (i.e., Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Baz Luhrmann) — of late that is. The opening craved here, and indicative of the movie’s previous early August date (before Weapons took it over), was $40M, on par with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The trailer for One Battle After Another dropped in late March, with extended footage show at CinemaCon in April. Trailers were splashed all over NFL games in addition to being attached on big movies like Warner Bros’ Superman. But the best marketing tool for One Battle After Another aside from DiCaprio is the movie itself: those who watch can’t say that 2-hour, 41-minute running time is a snooze, rather the pic is an adrenaline rush.
It’s quite a feat that thanks to Scorsese and DiCarpio’s names alone, 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon opened to $23.2M, saddled with a 3 hour-, 26-minute running time — and that’s when the actors strike prevented the cast from doing any kind of PR. In PostTrak exits, 53% came because it was a Scorsese movie, while 34% bought tickets for DiCaprio.
The expectation is that One Battle After Another has more going for it. DiCaprio’s recent movies, Flower Moon and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, received an A- and B Cinemascores, respectively.
Now, the biggest battle for the movie remains its liberal-leaning tone, making any play in the heartland and red state areas tricky. Some will argue the movie is really about Sean Penn’s military antagonist who chases down DiCarpio’s dormant 1980s rabble rouser. However, One Battle After Another is a movie about an anarchist against “the man” in a search of his daughter. It also couldn’t be a more relevant film speaking truths to the current MAGA-leaning power. The movie’s opening sequence at an ICE holding facility is so chilling it feels like Anderson shot it last week.
Stateside we understand that advance tickets sales for One Battle After Another are ahead of Killers of the Flower Moon with solid business in New York and Los Angeles and climbing in other major cities. Stateside previews begin Thursday at 2 p.m, at 3,200 sites, expanding to 3,500 theaters by Friday. Males under and over 25 are the best in first choice.
The movie is releasing in all major offshore markets on a total of 17,000 global screens, with Japan, Korea and Turkey going later. At the international box office, One Battle After Another is expected to play like a Tarantino title, which means that France should be one of the biggest proponents. In terms of the foreign push, DiCarpio and crew attended a fan event in Mexico for the pic along with its London premiere.
Also opening this weekend is Universal/DreamWorks’ big-screen take of the Netflix preschool series Gabby’s Dollhouse, which is eyeing $13M-$15M at 3,500 theatres. The live-action/animated hybrid stars Kristen Wiig, Gloria Estefan and Laila Lockhart Kraner and is rated G.
Blurb: Gabby (Lockhart Kraner, reprising her role from the series) heads out on a road trip with her Grandma Gigi (Estefan) to the urban wonderland of Cat Francisco. But when Gabby’s dollhouse, her most prized possession, ends up in the hands of an eccentric cat lady named Vera (Wiig), Gabby sets off on an adventure through the real world to get the Gabby Cats back together and save the dollhouse before it’s too late. Stateside previews are at 2 p.m. Girls under 12 and moms are making a date for this.
Lionsgate meanwhile has the horror sequel Strangers: Chapter 2 at 2,650 locations with an expected $6-7M start. Starring Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso and Amy Horvath, the Renny Harlin-directed sequel follows a couple whose vehicle breaks down on the final day of their cross-country road trip, forcing them to take refuge in a remote Airbnb. As night falls, three masked strangers terrorize them until dawn. Strangers: Chapter 1 opened to $11.8M and legged out to $35M+ domestic. The previous Strangers movies count over $161M at the global box office. Men over 25 have the most first choice.