Leonardo DiCaprio returns. This time, he’s working with Paul Thomas Anderson, who looks to be unintentionally joining Darren Aronofsky in releasing uncharacteristic genre films this year that can potentially appeal to a larger audience. Our Editor-in-Chief, Chris Bumbray, loved One Battle After Another, saying in his glowing review, “Will it make its money back? Who knows. But at the end of the day, that might actually be irrelevant, because One Battle After Another is a masterpiece. It’s the kind of movie people will still be talking about thirty years from now, long after many others from this era are forgotten.”
Deadline reports that the early box office for One Battle After Another has taken in $2.5 million for its Thursday previews. The word is, though, that the advanced ticket sales in cities are continuing to grow. This early weekend box office total is actually quite similar to the preview opening numbers of DiCaprio’s last film — Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which is an Apple Original film. Killers would start its run with a $2.6 million opening, with Scorsese being a bigger draw than Anderson. For more context, DiCaprio’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was directed by Quentin Tarantino, would open early with double the figures at $5.8 million. That film would go on to raise $16.7 million on Friday and $41 million over the weekend.
One Battle After Another is another critical darling for Anderson, as it stands at an aggregate rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience score currently stands at 88%, which ranks higher than some popular DiCaprio films like The Revenant and The Wolf of Wall Street. It can’t be said enough how much our EIC loved it, giving it a perfect 10 rating and saying, “There’s something genuinely exciting about Warner Bros. releasing four films this year that make the most of the big-screen experience. Sinners and F1 delivered for action, Weapons did it for horror, and now this does it for drama. One Battle After Another is a full cinematic meal—the only movie I’ve seen in a long time where, if I’d been offered the chance to watch it again immediately after it ended, I would have said yes without hesitation.”
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed