The first trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon was released yesterday, and it’s incredible. For years, all we knew about the film was a single still of stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone sitting at a table. finally Watching movies for a long time is really exciting. This is the first movie since Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, and I suspect it will be the first adult drama to hit the box office big time since the year it came out. .
Movies recovered in many ways last year, but the halcyon days of 2019 seem incredibly far away for others. The year saw the birth of several blockbuster non-franchise films. Worldwide, Little Women earned $218.9 million, Ford v Ferrari $225.5 million, Hustlers $157.6 million, and Parasite $263.1 million. Knives Out dropped to $311.9 million. On top of all of them was Quentin Tarantino’s Manson Murder Alternate History, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which sold 374.6 million tickets thanks to its director’s fame and star-studded cast. earned a dollar Killers of the Flower Moon is a different, obviously not-so-fun movie, but it will bring adult moviegoers back to the cinema in a way that hasn’t yet been seen post-coronavirus. I think we have a chance.
That’s because “Killers of the Flower Moon” shares two important things with Hollywood’s “Once Upon a Time.” First, this is the long-awaited next installment from a successful Hollywood favorite. Not all Scorsese films are hits, but in the 21st century alone, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, and The Wolf of Wall Street have hit box office records. So the second thing Killers of the Flower Moon has in common with OUATIH, and all of Scorsese’s blockbusters of the last 20 years, is the biggest American movie that isn’t Tom Cruise. It is the presence of the star, Leonardo DiCaprio.
Leo hasn’t been in that many movies, so it’s easy to forget just how big a box office he makes. Remember Revenant? What movie did he win an Oscar for in 2015?He saw it when he was 21 and still in college, and now he’s 29 and 7 years out of college. “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the third movie since (OUATIH, Don’t Look Up). DiCaprio made a big hit ($533 million) for a movie about a man trying to survive for nearly three hours in the wilderness. If anyone wants to revive adult drama, it’s him.
Of course, Killers of the Flower Moon would have to clear a pretty high threshold to be a hit. It cost $200 million to make, so it needs to raise at least $400 million to start turning a profit. That’s a lot of money, and since the pandemic started, only superheroes and sequels have made that much money.
Killers of the Flower Moon, on the other hand, weren’t allowed to be primarily profitable. Apple is set to release the film theatrically, which is unusual for a streamer and is probably driven more by Scorsese and DiCaprio’s push for theatrical release than by Apple’s own interests. It seems that Rather, like The Irishman, Killers Of The Flower Moon will also see Apple earning honors and award recognition by handing the most acclaimed living American director a huge check. is more likely to be an attempt to buy
So it doesn’t really have to be a big box office hit to achieve the goals Apple is likely aiming for. However, I don’t think it can always be written off. Older audiences are slowly making their way back into theaters, and films like Book Club: The Next Chapter and 80 for Brady, while less connected to audiences than their pre-Corona counterparts, are coming back to life. There are signs that “A Man Called Otto” earned $112.6 million thanks to Tom Hanks’ position as a box-office drawer among almost all older audiences, and “The Whale”‘s success was star-driven. It further indicates that there are viewers who prefer drama. Now that moviegoers across the board have had their moment back in theaters with Top Gun: His Maverick, I’m not going to rule out the possibility of Murderer of Flower Moon as a movie that could bring audiences back into the drama. .