“Killers of the Flower Moon,” a legacy movie directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Di Niro, has flopped extravagantly at the box office. The film has been said to be “Dead On Arrival” by Breitbart News as Apple Studios is already looking to take on loss even just two weeks after the film’s release.
Following the release of “Killers of the Flower Moon” on October 20, the gross revenue of the film has seen a repeated and consistent decline since. So far, according to Box Office Mojo, a site that tracks box office earnings for major films, “Killers of the Flower Moon” has only brought in a gross of $42 million domestically and $86 million worldwide.
According to Breitbart News, Apple Studios spent a whopping $200 million in the production of the film, with another $60 million being speculated as advertising spend of the movie. That sets the stage for a shockingly bad return on a movie that was made to be one of the premier theater viewing events of the years.
The presence of one of the greatest directors of all time, along with two of the best and most famous actors in the world, was still not even to drag the film into profitability in an age where theater viewing is a dying trend.
Adding even more mystery to the shocking underperformance of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the Rotten Tomatoes score for both critics and audience score was exceptional. The critics scored the movie an astounding 93%, and the audience gave the film an 85% rating.
As for the plot of the film, the “Killers of the Flower Moon” page on Apple+, where the movie will soon be streaming, describes the plot as the following. “When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one – until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.” The film will be available on the Apple+ streaming platform at “A later date.”
The plot of the film adds even more mystery to the wowing underperformance of the gross revenue for this film. Paramount Studios has shown through spinoffs of the famed “Yellowstone” franchise that Americans have great interest in the era between the American Civil War and World War 2. With the movie seemingly dealing with a similar topic, at least at face value, it strikes me as surprising that more people didn’t come to see the film.
That being said, times are changing for the movie industry. The movies that are available on streaming services are far better than in years past, and new films make their way to streaming in short order. It could be that this horrendous showing of “Killers of the Flower Moon” at the box office is a sign of things to come, a canary in the coal mine, so to speak, for the rest of the industry.
With the price of going to the movies only increasing, it is becoming a much riskier proposition. Many adults simply do not want to spend excess money on something like a movie when they cannot know for sure that the nearly four hours will be enjoyable.
The featured image is a screenshot from an embedded YouTube.
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