‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Shrugs off Drama, Opening with $19.2M

Olivia Wilde attends a special screening of "Don't Worry Darling" at AMC Lincoln Square on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022, in New York. (AP)
Olivia Wilde attends a special screening of "Don't Worry Darling" at AMC Lincoln Square on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022, in New York. (AP)
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‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Shrugs off Drama, Opening with $19.2M

Olivia Wilde attends a special screening of "Don't Worry Darling" at AMC Lincoln Square on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022, in New York. (AP)
Olivia Wilde attends a special screening of "Don't Worry Darling" at AMC Lincoln Square on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022, in New York. (AP)

After off-screen drama threatened to consume Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling,” the Warner Bros. release opened No. 1 at the box office, debuting with $19.2 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, “Don’t Worry Darling” was engulfed by a storm of controversies that revolved around everything from Pugh’s allegedly strained relationship with Wilde to whether Styles might have even spit on co-star Chris Pine at the film’s Venice Film Festival premiere. (Styles denied it.) The movie, too, was torched by critics (38% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and arrived in theaters with more baggage than any recent release.

For an original film that cost $35 million to make, a $19.2 million launch was solid — and slightly more than the studio had forecast. A large number of moviegoers — including plenty of Styles fans — turned up to see what all the fuss was about.

But the release of “Don’t Worry Darling,” playing in 4,113 theaters, was also no home run. Audiences gave it a B- CinemaScore, and ticket buyers fell off on Saturday after more promising results on Thursday and Friday. Warner Bros. said the audience was 66% female. The film added $10.8 million internationally.

Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros., estimated that “the background noise had a neutral impact.” The studio, he said, was “pleased with these results given our modest production budget.”

The audience scores and tapering-off ticket sales suggest “Don’t Worry Darling” may struggle to hold well in the coming weeks. But its good-enough debut means that Wilde’s film didn’t turn into the complete fiasco that some pegged it to be.

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore, said that, ultimately, bad publicity was good publicity for Wilde’s follow-up to her directorial debut, the 2019 teen comedy “Booksmart.”

“The latest from Olivia Wilde benefited from the heightened awareness and mainstream press coverage that made ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ the virtual water cooler film of the moment and raised its FOMO factor to even greater heights and this paid big dividends at the box office,” said Dergarabedian.

Last week’s top film, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s African epic “The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis, slid to second place with $11.1 million in its second weekend of release. That was a modest 42% dip for the Sony Pictures release, a sign of resiliency for the acclaimed action drama.

Third place went to a familiar box-office force. The Walt Disney Co.′ rerelease of James Cameron’s “Avatar” grossed $10 million domestically and $20.5 million internationally, 13 years after its initial run in theaters. Cameron’s remastered “Avatar,” playing in 1,860 theaters, was again especially popular in 3-D, which accounted for a whopping 93% of its domestic sales. A prelude to the upcoming December release of the long-awaited sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the rerelease further pads the all-time worldwide box office record for “Avatar,” which now surpasses $2.85 billion.

Holding well in fourth place was “Barbarian,” the Airbnb thriller from Disney and 20th Century Studios. In its third weekend of release, the film added 550 theaters and fell just 26% from the weekend prior. “Barbarian” has thus far grossed $28.4 million against a $4 million budget.



Movie Review: 'Eddington' Is a Satire About Our Broken Brains That Might Re-Break Your Brain

 This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
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Movie Review: 'Eddington' Is a Satire About Our Broken Brains That Might Re-Break Your Brain

 This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)

You might need to lie down for a bit after "Eddington." Preferably in a dark room with no screens and no talking. "Eddington," Ari Aster's latest nightmare vision, is sure to divide but there is one thing I think everyone will be able to agree on: It is an experience that will leave you asking "WHAT?" The movie opens on the aggravated ramblings of an unhoused man and doesn't get much more coherent from there. Approach with caution.

We talk a lot about movies as an escape from the stresses of the world. "Eddington," in which a small, fictional town in New Mexico becomes a microcosm of life in the misinformation age, and more specifically during the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, is very much the opposite of that. It is an anti-escapist symphony of masking debates, conspiracy theories, YouTube prophets, TikTok trends and third-rail topics in which no side is spared. Most everyone looks insane and ridiculous by the end, from the white teenage girl (Amélie Hoeferle) telling a Black cop (Michael Ward) to join the movement, to the grammatical errors of the truthers, as the town spirals into chaos and gruesome violence.

Joaquin Phoenix plays the town sheriff, a soft-spoken wife guy named Joe Cross, who we meet out in the desert one night watching YouTube videos about how to convince your wife to have a baby. He's interrupted by cops from the neighboring town, who demand he put on a mask since he's technically crossed the border.

It is May 2020, and everyone is a little on edge. Joe, frustrated by the hysterical commitment to mandates from nowhere, finds himself the unofficial spokesperson for the right to go unmasked. He pits himself against the slick local mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is up for reelection, in the pocket of big tech and ready to exploit his single fatherhood for political gain. At home, Joe's mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell) spends all day consuming internet conspiracy theories, while his wife Louise (a criminally underused Emma Stone) works on crafts and nurses unspoken traumas.

Joe's eagerness to take on Ted isn't just about masking. Years ago, Ted dated his now-wife, a story that will be twisted into rape and grooming accusations. Caricatures and stereotypes are everywhere in "Eddington," but in this world it feels like the women are especially underwritten - they are kooks, victims, zealots and the ones who push fragile men to the brink. But in "Eddington," all the conspiracies are real and ordinary people are all susceptible to the madness.

In fact, insanity is just an inevitability no matter how well-intentioned one starts out, whether that's the woke-curious teen rattled by rejection, or the loyal deputy Guy (Luke Grimes) who is suddenly more than happy to accuse a colleague of murder. Louise will also be swayed by a floppy-haired internet guru, a cult-like leader played with perfect swagger by Austin Butler.

The problem with an anarchic satire like "Eddington," in theaters Friday, is that any criticism could easily be dismissed with a "that's the point" counterargument. And yet there is very little to be learned in this silo of provocations that, like all Aster movies, escalates until the movie is over.

There are moments of humor and wit, too, as well as expertly built tension and release. "Eddington" is not incompetently done or unwatchable (the cast and the director kind of guarantee that); it just doesn't feel a whole of anything other than a cinematic expression of broken brains.

Five years after we just went through (at least a lot of) this, "Eddington" somehow seems both too late and too soon, especially when it offers so little wisdom or insight beyond a vision of hopelessness. I wonder what world Aster thought he'd be releasing this film into. Maybe one that was better, not cosmically worse.

It's possible "Eddington" will age well. Perhaps it's the kind of movie that future Gen Alpha cinephiles will point to as being ahead of its time, a work that was woefully misunderstood by head-in-the-sand critics who didn't see that it was 2025's answer to the prescient paranoia cinema of the 1970s.

Not to sound like the studio boss in "Sullivan's Travels," trying to get the filmmaker with big issues on the mind to make a dumb comedy, but right now, "Eddington" feels like the last thing any of us need.