Margot Robbie has seen her second movie in a row become a box office bomb, as Babylon failed to gain a hold over the festive period. The movie, which also stars Brad Pitt, Olivia Wilde and Tobey Maguire, was given a limited release on December 23 to less than positive reviews and that has clearly not helped the film’s box office earnings. Currently, the movie seems certain to end the extended weekend having taken less than $6 million against its $79 million budget.
Babylon is a three-hour-plus movie, which as many moviegoers know is long for any film, and it seems that many just haven’t had the time to spend heading to cinemas to see it, especially when playing next door is the visually stunning Avatar: The Way of Water. While a lot of the issues with movies like Babylon recently have revolved around timing, as well as people being more choosy about which movies they spend money to go and see on the big screen, for Margot Robbie this is the second movie in the last few months to have been badly reviewed and flopped at the box office.
Margot Robbie has rarely put a foot wrong since breaking into Hollywood with her role in The Wolf of Wall Street. In October, the movie Amsterdam was released in a flurry of controversy, and ended up crashing at the box office and with critics. Now, Robbie is once again facing the same story again with Babylon, and it seems like even its wider release in January may not be enough to save the movie from being a commercial failure.
Babylon is a Vision of Excess and a Different Time In Hollywood History
Babylon is a movie that takes place in the 1920s and shows a darker side of Hollywood where dreams are made and broken in a world where debauchery is king and the consequences of falling into a well of partying can only end badly.
Despite the movies’ poor reviews, there has been plenty of speculation about the possibility of Margot Robbie picking up another Oscar nomination for her role in the film. Critics have mostly been full of praise for Robbie, if not much else, and it seems that it is one of those rare occasions that audiences have unfortunately been in agreement.
The strange thing about Babylon is that early reviews were mostly positive, but as more have arrived, the scores for the film have started to slide. While audiences will have the option to see the movie in greater volumes in January, there could be many put off investing over 3 hours in the movie based on the incoming reviews from the limited U.S. only release. Margot Robbie will hopefully be able to turn her fortunes around with next year’s Barbie, which has developed such an air of intrigue around it that the idea of that movie being a flop is pretty incomprehensible right now. However, stranger things have happened recently, and we will have to wait until the film’s July 21, 2023.