Audiences didn't open their wallets to see the infamous rivalry between the Sharks and the Jets play out on the big screen.
"West Side Story," Steven Spielberg's remake of the classic musical, fell flat in its box office debut, collecting a paltry $10.5 million from 2,820 theaters. That's cause for concern because Disney and 20th Century Studios spent $100 million to revive the Shakespearean love story for modern times and stand to lose millions, unless "West Side Story" endures at the box office through the holidays and Oscar season.
It may be possible to attract moviegoers between Christmas and New Years, but it's a bad start for one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year -- and one that opened exclusively in theaters.
"But that was then, and this is now. Moviegoing conditions remain impaired," Gross says. "If 'West Side Story' is going to be profitable, it will need to connect internationally as well domestically." After October set pandemic box office records, thanks to "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" and "No Time to Die," movie theater attendance has taken a downturn. That will change next week when Sony's comic book sequel "Spider-Man: No Way Home" hits cinemas. What remains clear, however, is that older audiences haven't been eager to return to the movies. Most of the tentpoles that have been commercially successful have been catered to younger males.
"West Side Story" looks like a blockbuster compared to this weekend's other new nationwide release, STX's athletic drama "National Champions," which went almost entirely unseen despite playing on more than 1,000 screens. The film, starring Stephan James and J.K. Simmons, flopped in its debut, bringing in $300,000 from 1,197 theaters -- an embarrassing result even by COVID-19 standards.
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