Leonardo DiCaprio's Box Office Battle

We’ll have a full box office breakdown coming to you shortly. But first, a deep dive into the top-earning film of this weekend:

Warner Bros.’ One Battle After Another took #1 at the Box Office with $22.4M domestic. Internationally, it earned $26.1M. This brings its worldwide total to $48.5M.

There are three ways to slice this:

• The good: this is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s biggest debut ever

• The bad: this broke Warner Bros.’ hot streak, whereby its previous 7 releases had all opened domestically to over $40M+

• The ugly: this is Leonardo DiCaprio’s worst opening in over a decade

Let’s take it one by one.

The good. This eclipsed PTA’s top-earning films at the box office by a wide margin:

Note that this is looking at the first week of wide release, not the first week of release:

• One Battle After Another (2025)

  • $22.4M opening

    • 3634 screens

• Magnolia (1999)

  • $5.7M opening (1st week of wide release, 4th week of release)

    • 1034 screens

• There Will Be Blood (2007)

  • $4.86M opening (1st week of wide release, 4th week of release)

    • 885 screens

• Boogie Nights (1997)

  • $4.7M opening (1st week of wide release, 4th week of release)

    • 907 screens

• The Master (2012)

  • $4.4M (first week of wide release, 2nd week of release)

    • 788 screens

One interesting back-of-the-napkin calculation based on the screen counts.

With inflation, Magnolia’s 1st week of wide release would sit at $11.08M. But that film was only released on 1034 screens. If you 3.5x that to equal the number of screens of One Battle After Another, the film would have earned $38.9M.

That’s slightly magical thinking as the per-screen average would have surely dropped opening on 3634 screens vs. 1034 screens, but it shows how the current wide release isn’t quite as glossy even when measured against PTA’s other releases.

Running the same calculations on each of the films, the order is very different:

Calculation breakdown:

• Magnolia (1999)

  • $38.9M opening (inflation adjusted w/ 3.5x screen multiplier)

• Boogie Nights (1997)

  • $38M opening (inflation-adjusted w/ 4x screen multiplier)

• There Will Be Blood (2007)

  • $31.2M opening (inflation adjusted w/ 4.1x screen multiplier)

• The Master (2012)

  • $28.6M opening (inflation adjusted w/ 4.6x screen multiplier)

• One Battle After Another (2025)

  • $22.4M opening

The bad.

Warner Bros.’ last 8 releases ranked from largest domestic opening weekend to lowest:

One Battle After Another ended Warner Bros.’ hot streak, even after their herculean marketing effort that saw the lead Leonardo DiCaprio do a massive amount of press.

Unlike every other film on the above list, One Battle After Another doesn’t have a defined genre. It’s part action, part comedy, part political thriller, part satire, part drama. It’s all the better for it, but it's a hard sell at the box office.

The ugly.

This is one of the lowest box office openings in over a decade for Leo:

Inflation-adjusted, this is his lowest box office opening since J. Edgar (2011).

What does this mean?

Well, first, let’s hope that the career high RT score of 96% will allow this to have low box office drops in subsequent weeks. But as it stands now, the film is projected to lose money at the box office. Although it has good Oscar chances, it will certainly recoup on VOD, etc.

But this would be the second Leo-lead film in a row to not recoup at the box office as it’s budget is somewhere between $130-150M. Killers of the Flower Moon carried a budget of $200-$215M and only made $159M worldwide.

Hopefully, this fares better in the weeks to come.

Here is the trailer.