No Jazz for “Babylon” at the Domestic Box Office with $4M+ Debut; Brad Pitt-Margot Robbie Epic Fails To Break Even With $250 Million: Here’s Why

Updated with the last checkout: Damien Chazelles $80 million 1920s Hollywood epic Babylon burst into flames last weekend with a scare at the local box office $4.85 million four-day start, falling short of Monday morning’s expected $5.3 million outlook.

Say what you will about the harsh winter conditions affecting moviegoers across the country, but this film — greenlit by a previous Paramount regime and largely backed by Brian Robbins’ new administration — was against the odds when seen by a cynical press. at the Academy Theater over a month ago and ended up receiving a mediocre 56% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The picture’s fate was further buried by audience abandonment, which included a terrible C++ CinemaScore and PostTrak 74% and 47% final recommendation, not to mention the running time of 3 hours and 8 minutes. Babylon is the top-grossing wide release in the United States for star Margot Robbie at $3.6 million, surpassing the feat Amsterdam$6.4 million, as well as for Brad Pitt, compared to $4 million in early 1993 True love.

No one cares about such results Babylon a choice to watch during the holiday season, even if it lacks adult-oriented competition. According to financial sources, it is too early to say exactly how much bleeding will happen here, as the Robbie Pitt film will not begin its overseas release until mid-January. That said, the winning point of this film is living around $250 million ww, and that with a global marketing spend of about $80 million, as well as the cost of production. Paramount, like every studio, will scale back its marketing spend on the film after the American flop, I’m told. The film was nominated for five Golden Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Important to note that in the new Covid era: whatever a film does at the box office has not been shown to hurt its Oscar chances. And there are several examples to prove it, one of the most important being the Searchlight’s Best Picture 2021 winner land of the nomadswhich generated single-digit earnings and on which the Disney art-house label never listed the picture’s official ticket sales.

household for Babylon would be lucky enough to reach $20 million, putting enormous pressure on foreign countries to deliver another $230 million — an impossible mission. However, Paramount believes the film’s runtime, which is more palatable to audiences abroad, as well as reviews in the UK and France, will Babylon a kind of pulse abroad. “They like these kinds of movies,” says an insider. Chazelles first man earned 57% of its $105 million total WW overseas. Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and France were key regions for this film as well as Chazelle’s multiple Oscar winners the country Last year Guillermo del Toro’s $60 million piece nightmare alley grossed $11.3M domestic and $39.6M WW.

Before someone at the box office writes an obituary for original films Babylon‘s results, it is important to distinguish everyone else’s movie. The picture was already a hit with its Hollywood-era storyline, not to mention the Hard-R story, which featured an elephant pooping on a human and a fat Arbuckle guy for the first 30 minutes of the title title, which is followed by a whore. Robbie’s Clara Bow-esque character throws up much later in the film during a stuffy Hollywood soiree. Who was the audience for it, other than critics and award winners? Films about the inner workings of Hollywood have historically generated little revenue. Not to mention the price of this historic piece, similar to a WWI era set Amsterdam, made the project an impossible task to achieve profitability for competing studios. So you passed.

Examples of Hollywood insider films that did not reach a mass audience: The three-time Oscar nominee Chaplin, starring Robert Downey Jr., which grossed only $9.5 million in 1992 (though it made Hollywood SNL alum in all seriousness as an actor) and Robert Altman’s two-time Cannes winner The player also earned just $21.7 million that year.

Paramount thought so The Wolf of Wall Street and Once in Hollywood in Babylon. It didn’t: Leonardo DiCaprio starred in both films. Wolf of Wall Street ($406.8 million WW) worked to appeal to more sophisticated audiences for the thriller about the rise and fall of stockbroker Jordan Belfort Once in Hollywood ($377.6 million WW) had Quentin Tarantino’s Electric Tales (Pitt won an Academy Award for Supporting Actor for that film). treasurejtall, After the chaos wrought by Hollywood’s transition from silent to talkies, Chazelle saw it as an allegory of what the industry is witnessing today in the collision of the big screen and streaming. If the filmmaker had to Babylon He would always make the cinema. The question is whether he can pull it off at a lower price point, which is the likely fate of some of those adult-skewed original films.

Chazelle and the picture’s producers, Olivia Hamilton and Matthew Plouffe, took the pictures Babylon to Paramount, where Wyck Godfrey was president of the Motion Picture Group at the time. Godfrey was a producer at Chazelle’s first man Godfrey’s MO at the time was to find and produce award winning seasonal films like Babylon for the Melrose lot, Not transformers movies. Chazelle has been developing the project for some time; Plouffe first learned about it as a former Focus Features director when the two met at Sundance about 13 years ago.

“He responded to that and became this champion,” Chazelle told us of Godfrey’s endorsement Babylon by appointment Crew calls podcast. “He fought hard to get the film into the studio. Without him, I don’t think it would be a Paramount film.”

After Godfrey left, former Paramount executive producer Emma Watts took over as supervisor Babylon and wanted to get it in shape before her departure in September 2021.

Babylon Production was originally scheduled to begin in March 2020, but the outbreak of the pandemic and filming did not begin until July 2021 in Santa Clarita. The area remains a hotbed for Hollywood filming dating back to the silent era when Chaplin filmed modern times on the high plateau, 40 kilometers north of Los Angeles. The mansion of the late western star William S. Hart served as the home of Pitt’s movie star Jack Conrad.

Pluffe told us more Crew calls“It was important for us to make the film the way films were made in the 20s, in the places where films were made and not pretend.”

Despite California tax breaks and local filming, there is a cost to starting a California production given the higher union labor rate. Not to mention starting and stopping a film during Covid, which also affected production costs at worst Amsterdam. Emma Stone originally had the female lead before she left in December 2020 due to a scheduling conflict. That’s when Robbie’s bond was announced, Deadline first reported.

Normally, films from a previous studio regime are abandoned as new masters emerge, but this did not happen Babylon. Godfrey left in June 2020 when Watts arrived. She left the company shortly after Jim Gianopulos stepped down as chairman and CEO in September 2021, when Robbins took over. He was nothing but supportive Babylon and Chazelle, who awards the Oscar winner the country director a first-look production deal for his Wild Chickens label with Paramount.

Babylon will hit Paramount+ before the Epix Pay TV window. Exhibitor sources tell me it’s a 45-day theatrical window. The studio has roped in Toronto-based co-financier C2 Motion Picture Group, led by Jason Cloth, who I’m told has a significant role in the film. With an international box office of $230 million and an estimated $20 million domestic finale, that will translate to revenues of $114 million from theatrical rentals, $10 million from home entertainment and streaming, $28 million leading dollars from international entertainment, $2 million from domestic free TV and $4 million from pay TV and $40 million from international payments. That’s $198 million in revenue versus $188 million in expenses, including inventory, excess inventory and interest for $10 million in profit (but that probably won’t happen). Note: no producer and Dwayne Johnson didn’t give us these numbers (stars and producers don’t have access to studio P&L statements, duh). These estimates come from film financing sources and are consistent with all the P&L calculations and research we’ve done over the years.

Says an insider connected to Production Defense BabylonProduction costs: “We acted so quickly to get what we needed. We didn’t have the luxury of a dollar anymore. It was Paramount’s incredible faith that moved mountains to make this film and Damien’s vision a reality.”

Our source adds, “The film became a spiritual mission, so different from the green screen Marvel movies. We didn’t have a lot of money and we didn’t get a lot of money.”

As for Paramount, and the outlook for awards season Babylon, it’s nowhere near faded to black.