Early box office numbers are not good for Sony’s “The Woman King.” They must now be panicking that $50 million budgeted film, touted as the “real Black Panther” story, will not be making its money back theatrically.
As mentioned yesterday evening, Variety was reporting Sony was “aiming” for a $15 million opening on its first weekend. I found that to be a bit too generous. It looks like it’ll be $12-$14 million tops.
The critically-pushed period epic nabbed just $1.7 million last night in 3,271 theaters. That’s just $520 per screen. Yikes. Not just that, but previews started a bit earlier, at 3pm, for this one. The amount it made is very weak.
I called it, there is absolutely no enthusiasm for this film beyond critics. Sony thought the rousing ovations it garnered at TIFF last weekend would be enough to push this one forward and bank on the Best Picture and Best Actress buzz, but the problem is, and always was, that the buzz was artificially produced. No audience cared for “The Woman King” before TIFF and still no audience cares for it now.