One Battle After Another Ignites a Box Office Revolution with $2.5 Million in Thursday Previews
One Battle After Another storms into its early weekend run with $2.5 million from Thursday previews, matching DiCaprio’s last outing.
Leonardo DiCaprio rolling into a Paul Thomas Anderson movie is already a big swing. The extra twist: this one sounds more mainstream than PTA usually goes for - unintentionally lining him up with Darren Aronofsky, who is also stepping into a more audience-friendly lane this year. Early signs say people are curious.
The early number
Thursday previews for One Battle After Another pulled in an estimated $2.5 million. Not a blowout, not a shrug - a real start, especially with advance sales in major cities said to be climbing heading into the weekend. That urban momentum is exactly where PTA fans tend to live, so it tracks.
How it stacks up against Leo history
- Killers of the Flower Moon - another Leo epic and an Apple Original - opened with $2.6 million in Thursday previews. Martin Scorsese is a bigger general-audience draw than Anderson, so being in that range is notable.
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood doubled this film's preview take with $5.8 million, then did $16.7 million on Friday and $41 million over the weekend. Different filmmaker, different vibe, different ceiling.
Critics and early audience are in
Anderson has another critical darling on his hands. The Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 98% with critics, and the audience score is an early 88% - higher than the user ratings for some of DiCaprio's biggest titles like The Revenant and The Wolf of Wall Street. If that holds, word of mouth could be sticky.
One reviewer went all the way
JoBlo's Editor-in-Chief Chris Bumbray dropped a perfect 10 on this and basically waved a giant masterpiece flag.
"Will it make its money back? Who knows. But at the end of the day, that might actually be irrelevant, because One Battle After Another is a masterpiece. It is the kind of movie people will still be talking about thirty years from now, long after many others from this era are forgotten."
He also called out Warner Bros. for going big-screen or bust this year across genres - pointing to Sinners and F1 for action, Weapons for horror, and now this for drama - and said this is the rare film he would have immediately rewatched if given the chance.
The inside-baseball angle
For the PTA die-hards: yes, the film is being framed as a departure - at least in how accessible it might be - and that lines up with Aronofsky testing a more crowd-pleasing lane this year too. Whether that translates to a bigger box office story is the weekend question. For now, $2.5 million on Thursday with city presales ticking up is a healthy sign.