Despite extremely positive first reactions, it looks as if Gareth Edwards' The Creator will go down as a box office flop. At $79 million worldwide the film's earnings sit just underneath its total production budget of $86 million.
However, when you factor in marketing costs and 50/50 revenue splits with theaters, the film needs to gross many tens of millions more to break even.
This past weekend, the film grossed $4.3 million in North America and $5.9 million internationally for a $10.2 million worldwide gross.
The fear now is that with The Creator looking like a flop and Brad Pitt's Ad Astra (2019) also flopping, studios might be skittish on original sci-fi concepts for quite some time.
When the film was first released at the end of September, it debuted to a solid 76% Rotten Tomatoes score but has since plummetted down to 67%. The audience score is also less than stellar, with just a 76% rating from over 1,000 contributions.
Some critics and online cinema fans are now debating whether John David Washington is leading man material. The discussion now is centering on the thought that a more charismatic actor could have elevated a plot that many are calling derivative.
Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla) directed the film and co-wrote the script alongside Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). Legendary award-winning composer Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, Dunkirk) is handling the score.
The cast includes John David Washington as Joshua, Gemma Chan as Maya, Ken Watanabe as Harun, Sturgill Simpson as Shipley, Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alfie, and Allison Janney as Howell.
Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war—and mankind itself.