Despite starring in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the number one movie in the world right now, Pedro Pascal couldn’t move the needle in the favor of Ari Aster’s Eddington. The satirical black comedy still hasn’t passed the $10 million mark at the domestic box office after 10 days of release. To make matters worse, the star-studded film found itself being outperformed by a Bollywood movie that’s playing in 1,800 fewer theaters. Headlined by the Oscar-winning Joaquin Phoenix, whose career spiral we’ll discuss in a moment, Eddington also features the massively popularEmma Stone and Austin Butler in supporting roles.
But their combined star power wasn’t enough to make up for Aster’s typically divisive filmmaking. Even his breakout hit, Hereditary, earned a dreaded D+ grade on CinemaScore, while his last film, Beau is Afraid, grossed just around $10 million worldwide against a reported budget of $30 million. Eddington, which is said to have cost close to $50 million, was just as divisive. It opened with a C- CinemaScore, and is currently sitting at a 63% audience rating on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “Eddington carries a stellar cast, fearless direction by Ari Aster and an off-kilter story, but its tonal misdirection will often leave viewers wanting.”
In its sophomore frame, Eddingtonexperienced a massive 64% drop, pushing its running domestic total to $8 million. It claimed the eighth spot on the domestic box office charts with a $1.6 million haul, coming up short of the Bollywood musical drama Saiyaara, which took the seventh spot with a second-weekend haul of $1.8 million. On the back of positive word-of-mouth, Saiyaara had a 131% increase in revenue this weekend, and has now made nearly $4 million domestically. It’s playing in just around 200 locations, compared to Eddington’s 2,000-plus theater-count.
Phoenix Needs to Rise from the Ashes
Phoenix has had a rough run since he won an Oscar for his central performance in the billion-dollar blockbuster Joker. Besides Beau is Afraid, he starred in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Joker: Folie à Deux, both of which made just over $200 million worldwide, against reported budgets of $200 million. Joker 2 earned a D CinemaScore and was widely criticized for deviating from everything that made the first film such a hit. Phoenix also starred in Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, which recovered roughly half of its reported $8 million budget. You can watch Eddington in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
