Damien Chazelle’s latest outing, First Man was a pretty good film earning critical acclaim and it’s definitely a contender come Oscar season. Sadly, that critical acclaim isn’t translating too well with the film’s box office numbers which to be honest is pretty low considering the names attached to it. Following the years leading up to the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, star Ryan Gosling gave a great performance as Neil Armstrong and his co-stars Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler and Corey Stoll among others were also brilliant.
The film was released on October 12, 2018 and has grossed over $55 million worldwide and $29 million domestically according to Box Office Mojo against a budget $59 to $70 million. Granted, there’s still time for the film to get its cash back but to be honest, this is pretty underwhelming. The film should be doing much better than this and it looks like Universal kinda knows that.
Deadline‘s report on last weekend’s box-office results which included a quote from Universal President of Domestic Theatrical Distribution, Jim Orr. At the time, the film grossed $16.5 million domestically so it’s doing better now. Orr briefly addressed the box-office numbers of the film (domestically), saying:
“Audiences, critics and award pundits will be talking about First Man for months, well into the New Year. We anticipate First Man to have a very long, successful run at the domestic box office which it certainly deserves.”
Some may point to the whole flag controversy but there’s probably more at play here. First Man is Chazelle’s lowest scored film both on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes with current scores of 7.7/10 and 89% respectively. It is perhaps Chazelle’s weakest film despite being quite good but who knows, Orr thinks it would do better in the future and the numbers are increasing so maybe there’s time for it to make some profit. However, they still have some competition with Halloween.
Source: Box Office Mojo , Deadline
