Whalefall box office falters despite strong reviews

Whalefall box office results landed with a thud this weekend. Brian Duffield's survival thriller opened Friday in theaters nationwide and pulled in an estimated $17.5 million worldwide, including $8 million from domestic screens, according to TheWrap's Sunday estimates. Against a reported net production budget of $60 million, the 20th Century Studios release now faces a long climb back to profitability, making the Whalefall box office debut one of the softest wide-release openings of the fall season.

The film played on 3,065 North American screens, a full wide release. Audiences who did show up graded it a B on CinemaScore, a middling mark for a genre picture counting on word of mouth. Review aggregator numbers were kinder: the film holds 71 percent with critics and an 81 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, JustJared reported, which suggests the real problem was getting people into seats rather than pleasing the ones who came.

Austin Abrams stars as Jay Gardiner, a young diver who returns to the California central coast to recover his late father's remains from the ocean floor. A solo dive goes wrong when a sperm whale hunting a giant squid swallows its prey, and a squid tentacle drags Jay into the creature's mouth. Trapped inside a living animal with a limited supply of oxygen, he must find a way out while facing the strained relationship with his father, Mitt, played by Josh Brolin. Duffield, known for No One Will Save You, directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with Daniel Kraus, adapting the author's 2023 novel of the same name. For the Whalefall box office, that high-concept premise was always the gamble: critics praised the nerve of the idea even when they doubted its commercial pull.

The production leaned on practical craft to sell the premise. The crew built compact practical sets and animatronics with Weta Workshop to create the whale's interior, and reviewers singled out the immersive sound design for heightening the claustrophobic tension, according to Particle News. Abrams carried the picture almost alone, acting with limited dialogue, and prepared by diving with whale documentarians. The screenplay was developed with consultation from whale experts, including Dr. Joy Reidenberg, a detail the studio has used to position the film as a theater-first sensory experience. Duffield shot much of the film on compact sets that kept the camera tight on Abrams's face, a choice reviewers said made the survival scenes feel more immediate.

A crowded field at the top

The Whalefall box office was not the weekend's only story. Paramount and Legendary's Street Fighter led the charts with $31 million domestic and $51 million worldwide, per TheWrap, an unremarkable launch for an $82 million co-production that earned a B-minus on CinemaScore. The gaming adaptation now faces Warner Bros. and DC's Clayface next weekend. Elsewhere on the chart, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything surprised with $15 million from only 855 theaters, the second-biggest documentary opening ever, according to Polygon. The film also lost the large-format battle: Street Fighter claimed most IMAX screens, leaving Whalefall with only a handful of Dolby showings in major markets, Decider reported.

What comes next for the film's run

Critics split on the film itself. Reviews published midweek praised the practical craft and Abrams's near-solo physical performance while faulting the father-son flashbacks for draining the tension, according to a summary of the critical response by Particle News. The Hollywood Reporter's chief film critic David Rooney wrote that the movie was not wild enough to be much fun, a verdict that captures the divide: admiration for the craft, frustration with the drama. JoBlo called the start abysmal and pointed to a broader pattern, noting that Disney has had a rough stretch opening non-franchise live-action films, with Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars also flopping earlier in the year. Whether strong reviews can carry the Whalefall box office past its slow start is now the open question, and next weekend's numbers will show if the film has any legs at all. The result also came in below the $11 million opening the studio had projected, according to Europesays, leaving the Whalefall box office as the weekend's clearest cautionary tale for original studio bets.

Source links: TheWrap, Hollywood Outbreak