There\u2019s no bringing this one back to life. \u201cThe Bride!,\u201d Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s \u201cBride of Frankenstein\u201d riff from Warner Bros. Pictures, bombed this weekend at the box office, bringing in just $7.3 million domestic and $13.6 million worldwide against a reported $80 million production budget.<\/p>\n
For Warner Bros., it ends a streak of nine straight movies for the studio that opened No. 1<\/a> at the domestic box office, with the most recent being \u201cWuthering Heights.\u201d \u201cThe Bride!\u201d fell to No. 3 in domestic theaters behind Pixar\u2019s \u201cHoppers\u201d and \u201cScream 7,\u201d which took a hard plunge of 73 percent<\/a> in its second week in theaters.<\/p>\n More from IndieWire<\/p>\n Though it had some ardent supporters, reviews for \u201cThe Bride!\u201d were pretty bleak. IndieWire\u2019s review<\/a> called it a \u201cretrograde\u201d feminist punk opera that marries together \u201cBonnie and Clyde\u201d and \u201cSid and Nancy\u201d in an unholy mashup, and others called it an out and out mess.<\/p>\n An ambitious mess, yes, but the Film Twitter reaction was not kind, to say the least. Audiences didn\u2019t respond to it either, saddling it with a C+ CinemaScore, though the Audience Popcornmeter at Rotten Tomatoes was a bit more generous than the critics, a 73 percent versus the Tomatometer score of 59 percent.<\/p>\n We just spent the better part of a year celebrating Warner Bros. and its film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy<\/a> for their big swings and originality, with audiences rewarding WB at the box office thanks to films like \u201cSinners,\u201d \u201cWeapons,\u201d and \u201cOne Battle After Another.\u201d The Academy is poised to recognize that originality too when one of \u201cOne Battle\u201d or \u201cSinners\u201d most likely wins Best Picture. \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d was another major swing from a female director, a film with a period setting that blended genre into a pop pastiche, had a bold vision, a comparable budget, and similarly polarized critics and audiences, but that one has done just fine with $213 million worldwide and counting and should be a money maker for the studio.<\/p>\n Deadline<\/a> reported that \u201cThe Bride!\u201d could on the other hand lose close to $90 million. It lines up more with the titanic miss that WB suffered with \u201cJoker: Foli\u00e9 a Deux,\u201d<\/a> and it\u2019s not too far off from what Bong Joon Ho\u2019s \u201cMickey 17\u201d did around this exact same time last year. That movie had an even greater budget of $118 million, but it opened a little stronger at $19 million and finished with $133 million worldwide. We might call it a minor miracle if \u201cThe Bride!\u201d wound up anywhere near those levels.<\/p>\n You can chalk up the lack of interest in \u201cThe Bride!\u201d to some \u201cFrankenstein\u201d fatigue after Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Best Picture nominee and \u201cPoor Things\u201d not long before that. The film was also delayed a bit, which may have been a silver lining to get it out of 2025 as Warner Bros.\u2019 parent company was trying to negotiate a sale. And while \u201cThe Bride!\u201d might not even be classified as a horror movie, there were other options for horror fans still in theaters with \u201cScream 7\u201d and \u201cSend Help.\u201d There\u2019s more than a few reasons why this one didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n The point is, \u201cThe Bride!\u201d is the type of movie we want Warner Bros. (and eventually under the Paramount umbrella<\/a>) to keep making and taking chances on. In theory, it\u2019s the sure thing, IP plays that should help to bankroll the riskier, original bets. This year, WB has \u201cSupergirl,\u201d \u201cCat in the Hat,\u201d \u201cMortal Kombat II,\u201d \u201cDune: Part Three,\u201d and \u201cEvil Dead Burn,\u201d but it also has the Tom Cruise movie from Alejandro G. Inarr\u00edtu, \u201cDigger,\u201d as well as David Robert Mitchell\u2019s \u201cFlowervale Street,\u201d and J.J. Abrams\u2019 \u201cThe Great Beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n Could we have a conversation about whether a \u201cBride of Frankenstein\u201d remix deserves an $80 million budget when the director\u2019s first film, \u201cThe Lost Daughter,\u201d was a $5 million indie drama? Of course. There was enough consternation about whether \u201cSinners\u201d deserved that same level of budget too<\/a>. And it was before that film\u2019s success that De Luca and Abdy were on the hot seat in their role.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Bride!\u201d won\u2019t put them at risk before a merger with Paramount could threaten their standing, but It\u2019s just a reminder that you\u2019d rather have more big swings and misses like \u201cThe Bride!,\u201d not fewer.<\/p>\n Best of IndieWire<\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no bringing this one back to life. \u201cThe Bride!,\u201d Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s \u201cBride of Frankenstein\u201d riff from Warner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7214,48332,96,2839,56,54,55,18199,1829],"class_list":{"0":"post-466794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-box-office","9":"tag-bride-of-frankenstein","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom","15":"tag-warner-bros","16":"tag-wuthering-heights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}