Warner Bros. has been hitting it out of the park over the last year at the box office, particularly when it comes to horror fare. Unfortunately, the studio’s latest piece of big-budget genre fare, namely director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s star-studded The Bride!, didn’t pan out as the studio had hoped. It came in well below expectations on opening weekend, serving as a grave disappointment.
See also: How THE BRIDE! Was Filmed
The Bride! opened to an estimated $7.2 million domestically over the weekend, coming in well below pre-release expectations. It had been pegged to pull in closer to $15 million. Even that would have been a rough start, however, as the very unique monster movie inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein carries a whopping $90 million production budget. To make matters worse, it only pulled in $6.3 million internationally, for a $13.5 million global start.
Gyllenhaal’s latest had to settle for third place on the charts, coming in behind Pixar’s latest Hoppers ($46 million) and the prior weekend’s champion Scream 7 ($17.3 million). Of note, Scream 7 had a record opening for the franchise, but dropped a massive 73% in its second weekend. All the same, it’s coming up on $150 million worldwide and will soon be the highest-grossing Scream movie ever.
Circling back to The Bride!, Warner Bros. went all out for this one, even giving it an IMAX release in addition to its hefty budget. While plenty of critics absolutely raved about it, the movie proved to be divisive, particularly with audiences. It earned a C+ CinemaScore, which is pretty rough and doesn’t suggest word of mouth will be of much benefit. Long legs are very unlikely and this is going to go down as a big swing and a miss commercially speaking.
The movie centers on a lonely Frankenstein (Christian Bale) who travels to 1930s Chicago to ask groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) to create him a companion. The two eventually bring a recently murdered young woman back to life, giving birth to The Bride (Jessie Buckley). A chaotic outlaw romance ensues.
Looking ahead, this upcoming weekend will be pretty dead because Hollywood is fully focused on the Oscars, which take place on Sunday. But A24’s Undertone will be hitting theaters for horror fans, offering more competition in the genre space, with Universal’s Reminders of Him also on the docket. Things pick up on March 20 when Project Hail Mary and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come roll into town.
The Bride! is in theaters now.
