{"id":511777,"date":"2026-03-08T20:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T20:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/511777\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T20:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T20:55:08","slug":"why-the-bride-bombed-at-box-office-could-lose-90m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/511777\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ‘The Bride’ Bombed At Box Office, Could Lose $90M"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt was a complete rejection by moviegoers around the world this weekend as Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s $80M bride of Frankenstein monster movie, The Bride<\/a>!, opened to $13.6M.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf that, domestic was $7.3M, not only breaking Warner Bros\u2019 No. 1 nine-picture opening streak at the B.O., but repping a bow that was lower than some recent lows for the Burbank, CA lot, read last year\u2019s disasters Mickey 17 ($19M) and Companion ($9.3M).<\/p>\n

\n\tIndustry sources, not Warners, believe the loss on The Bride! could approach $90M in its first cycle after home entertainment downstream. Note, it will be a while before the ultimate red is realized. Warner Bros had no comment about the movie\u2019s P&L which includes $65M in worldwide P&A. Bad timing for a loss as WBD CEO David Zaslav just cashed in $114M+ in stocks<\/a> due to a trading window opening for executives involved in any deal negotiations.<\/p>\n

\n\tWord was out for quite some time that The Bride! was doomed, that Gyllenhaal was having an uphill battle during production, this her first massive big-budget movie after the $5M costing (before P&A), 3x Oscar nominated Lost Daughter. Hence the push of the pic\u2019s release date from last fall to this weekend. <\/p>\n

\n\tYou can\u2019t fault Warners on the weekend, it\u2019s right in the pre-Oscars slot and there\u2019s a lot of heat for Bride! star Jessie Buckley to take home Best Actress next Sunday for Hamnet after wins at the Actors Awards, BAFTA, Golden Globes and Critics Choice. However, many around town consider the production cost for an original, edgy, high-art movie, with an actress who is still nascent in her career as far as marquee value goes, to be way too much. It\u2019s an understatement to say that we live in a world where a movie\u2019s bad word of mouth is immediate in the social media-verse (take your pick, Solo: Star Wars Story, Snow White, the list goes on); it\u2019s very hard for marketing to save a movie alone. And when it\u2019s great, a la other Warner Bros\u2019 big bets, Sinners and One Battle After Another, the movie is screened well in advance to trigger good vibes.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat is clear in watching in Gyllenhaal\u2019s Bride! is that every shot is ornate and deliberate, the point was to be campy, badass, with the filmmaker notching sublime performances out of her actors with Bale and Buckley losing themselves entirely onscreen. I understand Gyllenhaal got to make the movie she wanted with the full support of Warner Bros Motion Picture chairs Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca. Bale, Buckley and Gyllenhaal worked it over the last two weeks on a London and NYC press tour. No orphaning going on here by anyone.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen where does The Bride! miss? And how does a period horror movie like Nosferatu sans major stars rally with a $21.6M opening, and a $95.6M domestic, $181.9M final? We\u2019ve said it too many times: Period horror is hard as it never fully persuades the horror audience in full, nor sophisticated moviegoers. Bride!\u2018s C+ Cinemascore is on par with Midsommar\u2018s C+, and just below the B- grades of Nosferatu, Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola-produced Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Crimson Peak. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFocus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tNosferatu worked in that it knew it was an elevated horror film; not to mention Dracula has more bite at the box office than Frankenstein in recent adaptations. Nosferatu also cost a reported $50M off $75M P&A and netted a $70M profit<\/a>. While Bride! is aesthetically appealing, there\u2019s a small audience for such fare. I understand that Gyllenhaal had a slew of ideas for what Bride! was \u2014 female empowerment movie, Bonnie & Clyde tragic love story, punk rock monster movie, all of which testing indicated needed to be stripped back. Exactly who this event was aimed at was also not taken into consideration. Screen Engine\/Comscore\u2019s Post Trak exits showed a 53% male\/47% female split with 39% guys over 25, 27% women over 25. Definite recommend, which is a platinum indicator of legs and word-of-mouth, was very low at 43%. The picture seemed to lean more toward the sophisticated audiences (we hear that the movie\u2019s best grosses where in Hamnet houses). Some critics found the zaniness of Bale\u2019s \u2018Puttin\u2019 on the Ritz\u2019 number (an homage to Mel Brooks comedy Young Frankenstein) hysterically brilliant, while others didn\u2019t get the joke. Gyllenhaal, I\u2019m told, embraced the testing process (she didn\u2019t have that on Lost Daughter) and reportedly soaked up all the comments. However, choices were made, and the pic\u2019s pacing remained meandering, along with extra characters who didn\u2019t drive the plot forward (Gyllenhaal\u2019s husband Peter Sarsgaard as the detective alongside Pen\u00e9lope Cruz). The ultimate fail here was the DNA of the movie and its inability to be an event for anybody.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso leaving Bride! more bruised was its arrival post Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein. Though a Netflix streaming movie, the 9x Oscar-nominated movie was watched by 33M in its first week. Greenlight Analytics tracking indicated that potential moviegoers already got their fill on anything Frankenstein, and hence weren\u2019t going out of their way to spend money on a movie they felt they already watched at home.<\/p>\n

\n\tA few things to consider in regards to The Bride!\u2018s exorbitant production cost. Gyllenhaal received top shelf with her cast, as well as below the line talent in Oscar-nominated Elvis production designer Karen Murphy, Joker\u2019s Oscar-nominated DP Lawrence Sher, and 3x Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell. The movie was shot in New York, and even though it received tax credits, I\u2019m told that creative decision alone is what made the project too expensive for Netflix. In the same breath, the movie was shot in the United States. Isn\u2019t that what the motion picture industry wants? If that\u2019s the case, then there\u2019s a very good case for money spent. There were $60M in production wages on The Bride! with over 2,500 local hires. The production worked with 500 businesses. Amen.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, the domestic box office is fragile, and the industry needs movies like Bride! to win. Lower production cost should be married to originality, and may the two never be separated. I understand that there was never a $20M reshoot on The Bride! That\u2019s misinformation, and Buckley only shot one day of reshoots. De Luca and Abdy\u2019s plan is to have a diversified slate so that the potential hits pay for any shortfalls for the big swings. And there\u2019s plenty of heat on this year\u2019s schedule with the Zazie Beetz SXSW world premiere They Will Kill, Mortal Kombat II, DC\u2019s Supergirl, Evil Dead Burn, David Robert Mitchell\u2019s Flowervale Street, Practical Magic 2, Alejandro Inarritu\u2019s Tom Cruise movie Digger, Clayface, The Cat in the Hat, J.J. Abrams\u2019 The Great Beyond and Legendary\u2019s Dune: Part Three on the horizon before Paramount swallows up what they see as a prized franchise studio, one that earned more than $4B at the global box office last year; one that was worth wrestling over with Netflix.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn what alternative universe does The Bride! win? At a significantly lower price point for an original, far away from del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein, with a film festival launch. At the same time, the biggest mistake would be not betting on Bride! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a complete rejection by moviegoers around the world this weekend as Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s $80M bride of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,105292],"class_list":{"0":"post-511777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-the-bride"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}