Despite rave critiques, Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” has failed to achieve traction with audiences on the box office.
In its first three weeks in cinemas, the adaption of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s Tony Award-winning musical, has captured just $36.6 million in international ticket gross sales. Its manufacturing funds was round $100 million, not together with advertising prices.
“Sounds like a write-off to me,” stated Eric Handler, media and leisure analyst at MKM Partners. “The markets which have executed the very best have been New York and L.A. The movie wasn’t capable of seize center America, and it did not appear to have that nice of a penetration into the Latino neighborhood.”
“West Side Story” tells the story of love-struck youngsters from two completely different social lessons in New York City in the course of the Fifties. Tony, a younger white boy with ties to a gang known as the Jets, and Maria, a younger Puerto Rican lady with ties to the Sharks gang. The Sharks and the Jets are in the midst of a battle for management of the Upper West Side of town, making Tony and Maria’s love forbidden.
The musical launched on Broadway in 1957 and has been revived a dozen instances in the a long time since.
Spielberg’s new iteration, distributed by Disney’s twentieth Century Studios, generated largely optimistic critiques from critics, incomes a 93% Certified “Fresh” Rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie was praised for its choreography and singing performances. However, this wasn’t sufficient to deliver moviegoers to cinemas.
“[‘West Side Story’] was largely a sufferer of timing and an lack of ability to draw youthful moviegoers,” stated Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. “Women over 35 are the drivers of most musicals. Not solely has that viewers been probably the most cautious to return to public social areas just like the movie show in the course of the pandemic, however renewed concern created by omicron headlines appears to have performed a main position in doubling down on that hesitance in the interim.”
Box office analysts stated “West Side Story” additionally seemingly suffered from not having a large Hollywood star hooked up and since its launch was so near that of “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The newest Marvel Cinematic Universe Film has dominated at the box office over the last two weeks.
In its opening weekend, “West Side Story” garnered $10.5 million, however the determine was greater than halved throughout its second weekend when the movie tallied just $3 million.
“‘West Side Story’ was purported to rebound this week,” stated Jeff Bock, senior analyst at Exhibitor Relations. “You cannot rebound once you have been by no means in the box office sport to start with.”
Many had hoped that sturdy phrase of mouth would assist enhance the movie, just like what occurred with 2017’s “The Greatest Showman.” But “West Side Story” took in solely $2.8 million over the Christmas weekend.
The box office is an trade of diminishing returns, that means every week a movie will make smaller and smaller quantities. At this tempo, “West Side Story” is not anticipated to show a revenue.
“And once you spend $100 million to do this, it can definitely trigger studios to reevaluate music and dance numbers going ahead,” Bock stated.
Movie musicals have struggled on the box office in latest years. During the pandemic, “Dear Evan Hansen” scored lower than $20 million throughout its international theatrical run and “In the Heights,” which had a twin launch in theaters and on HBO Max, secured just $43.8 million worldwide.
2019’s “Cats,” which changed the enduring Broadway costumes with digital fur, bombed at the box office, pulling in just $72.4 million globally on a manufacturing funds of round $95 million, not together with advertising prices.
In truth, the highest-grossing musical movies in the final 5 years have been 2019’s “Frozen II,” which topped $1.4 billion globally and 2017’s live-action remake of “Beauty and the Beast,” which reached $1.2 billion. The solely different movie in the musical class to high $500 million globally was the animated function from Illumination known as “Sing,” in accordance with Comscore information.
“The musical style, at the least for now, appears to have fallen out of favor for contemporary audiences,” stated Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
Disclosure: Comcast is the dad or mum firm of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes and distributed “Sing,” “Cats” and “Dear Evan Hansen.”