Every Monday morning, Virginia-based movie theater owner Mark O’Meara looks at the box office to see how the latest releases are playing in his area. This past weekend didn’t offer much to celebrate as some well-reviewed Oscar contenders flopped at the box office.
A24’s “The Smashing Machine,” a sports biopic starring Dwayne Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr, “died pretty quickly,” O’Meara reports. Meanwhile, “no one really did well with ‘Roofman,'” a comedy-drama starring Channing Tatum.
“It was very slow,” O’Meara says. “I thought the films were good. There was a lot of hype with them that just didn’t happen.”
The Washington, DC metropolitan area wasn’t the only place where these films failed to connect. “Roofman” debuted with a paltry $8 million, while “Smashing Machine” suffered a brutal 70% decline in its second release, bringing earnings to $10.1 million. As for other adult-oriented films, “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a $34 million-budgeted musical adaptation starring Jennifer Lopez, fizzled with $850,000 — although from far fewer theaters than Tatum’s film.
Even Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” directed by Leonardo DiCaprio, struggled to stand out despite being hailed as a generational masterpiece. Although the $140 million worldwide haul is impressive for an original, R-rated film with a running time of nearly three hours, “One Battle” requires about $300 million to break even. Indeed, Warner Bros. has spent more than $130 million on production and $70 million on promotional efforts, and ticket sales are typically split 50-50 between studios and theater exhibitors. Meanwhile, DiCaprio typically earns the first dollar gross on his films, meaning he receives a percentage of the box office revenue before the studio recoups the costs.
“These prestige films have failed to create a sense of FOMO among audiences,” says Fandango box office analyst Shawn Robbins. “They weren’t eventful enough.”
Robbins also wonders if audiences have been trained to wait for streaming debuts to see certain films, especially ones that don’t feature superheroes, marauding dinosaurs or Christopher Nolan-style pyrotechnics. Since COVID, studios have reduced the length of time films are exclusively available in theaters from 90 days to, in some cases, a few weeks.
“People expect these movies to be available at home much sooner than before,” he says.
In the case of “Roofman,” backed by Paramount Pictures and Miramax, a meager $19 million budget means losses will be minimal. Other recent awards won’t be so lucky. “One Battle After Another,” which is mounting a multimillion-dollar Oscar campaign, is on track to lose $100 million, according to studio executives familiar with the economics of films of similar size. A spokesperson for Warner Bros. pushed back those estimates while pointing out that the company had a successful year at the box office with hits like “Sinners” and “A Minecraft Movie.”
“Warner Bros. refutes Variety anonymous sources and their uninformed estimates,” a studio spokesperson said. “The studio’s films, including “One Battle After Another,” have achieved financial reward in 2025 with more than $4 billion earned to date.
The $4 billion figure refers to box office revenue, not profits. However, Warner Bros. 2025’s streak of triumphs helps make up for a loss like “One Battle.” And Anderson’s film is expected to be a major player at the Oscars, making it valuable to society beyond the bottom line. Earlier this fall, a Warner Bros. source said. estimated year-to-date movie theater profits at about $600 million before counting a big winner in “The Conjuring: Last Rites” and a money loser in “One Battle After Another.”
With “The Smashing Machine,” the failure disturbingly reveals the risks of A24’s new business strategy. In 2024, the independent studio completed a financing round that set its valuation at $3.5 billion. The company used the capital to finance a range of much more expensive films. “The Smashing Machine,” for example, cost $50 million, tens of millions of dollars more than a typical independent film. Meanwhile, the Timothée Chalamet-led table tennis drama “Marty Supreme” has a budget of between $60 million and $70 million, making it the most expensive film in the studio’s history. A24 clearly wants to make the kind of mid-budget films that the big studios have abandoned, but higher spending means failures will hurt even more.
A24 mitigated some risks on “The Smashing Machine” by selling foreign rights. Executives at rival studios estimate that limits losses on the film to about $10 million, but it will leave a bad taste in the mouths of the studio’s foreign partners, who will bear most of the pain.
“It’s an epic fiasco,” says a rival independent leader. “A24 covered itself, but everyone else internationally got their asses kicked. They might not want to come back to the well.”
Even though some films aimed at adults are having a tougher time, analysts hope that studios will continue to make them. They believe it will take films of all shapes and sizes to push movie attendance back to pre-pandemic levels. Revenues remain around 20% lower than in 2019.
“Consumers go to the theater a few times a year at most. They are drawn to what they know: sequels, prequels and spinoffs that they are less likely to leave disappointed with,” says Eric Wold, an analyst at Texas Capital Securities. “It has always been difficult for studios to invest heavily in original intellectual property. The risk of failure is higher.”
