Babylon’s limited Christmas release arrived with hardly a whimper, giving Margot Robbie another box-office hit after its Amsterdam release in October.
Paramount PicturesMargot Robbie watched her second movie in a row become a box office bomb, eh Babylon could not prevail over the festive period. The film, which also stars Brad Pitt, Olivia Wilde and Tobey Maguire, had a limited release on December 23 to less than positive reviews, and that clearly didn’t help the film’s box office returns. As of this writing, the film looks set to wrap up the long weekend, having grossed less than $6 million against its $79 million budget.
Babylon is a three-plus-hour film, which, as many moviegoers know, is long for any film, and it seems that many simply haven’t had the time to head to the cinema to see it, especially when the playing next door is the visual is stunning Avatar: The Way of Water. While a lot of the issues with movies like Babylon lately have been about timing and people have been pickier about which movies to spend money on to see on the big screen, this is Margot Robbie’s second film in the last few months poorly reviewed and flopped at the box office.
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Margot Robbie has rarely made a mistake since breaking into Hollywood with her role in The Wolf of Wall Street. In October, the film Amsterdam was released to a flurry of controversy, eventually ending up at the box office and critical acclaim. Now Robbie faces the same story again with Babylon, and it seems even its wider release in January won’t be enough to save the film from commercial failure.
Related: Babylon Review: A spectacle of hedonistic excess
A vision of excess, Babylon is a different time in Hollywood history
Paramount PicturesBabylon is a film set in the 1920’s that shows a darker side of Hollywood, where dreams are made and shattered in a world where debauchery is king and the consequences of falling down a party fountain can only end badly.
Despite the film’s poor reviews, there has been much speculation about the possibility of Margot Robbie receiving another Oscar nomination for her role in the film. Critics have mostly been full of praise for Robbie, if not much more, and it seems this is one of those rare occasions when audiences are sadly united.
The weird thing about Babylon is that early reviews were mostly positive, but as more rolled in, the scores for the film began to slide. While audiences will have a chance to see the film in bulk in January, many might shy away from investing more than 3 hours into the film based on the in-depth reviews of the limited US release. Margot Robbie will hopefully be able to reverse her fate with next year’s Barbie, who has developed such a fascination around her that the idea of this film being a flop is pretty much incomprehensible at the moment. However, stranger things have been happening lately and we will have to wait until July 21, 2023.