One Battle After Another Just Outgunned Steven Spielberg’s Most James Bond-Like Movie at the Box Office

Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another isn't exactly steamrolling the box office, but it just cleared a sneaky milestone: it inched past Steven Spielberg's Munich worldwide. That alone is a fun bit of film history symmetry, and the way it happened says a lot about how buzz works now.

The numbers and the scorecards

• Munich (2005): $131.4 million worldwide (per The Numbers), Rotten Tomatoes 79% critics | 83% audience
• One Battle After Another (2025): $138 million worldwide so far (per The Numbers), Rotten Tomatoes 95% critics | 85% audience

What Anderson's movie actually is

Leonardo DiCaprio leads as Bob Ferguson, a former revolutionary who has to protect his daughter when an old adversary reappears. Sean Penn plays that ghost from the past. Anderson took Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland and reshaped it into an action-forward, very funny, very chaotic drama. If that combo sounds unlikely, that's the point — it's lively, it moves, and it has a sense of humor about the mayhem.

Spielberg watched it and went full fan

When Spielberg saw One Battle After Another, he didn't hold back. This was his reaction at the time:

"What an insane movie, oh my God. There is more action in the first hour of this than in every other film you've ever directed put together. Everything, it is really incredible. This is such a concoction of things that are so bizarre and at the same time so relevant, that I think have become increasingly more relevant than perhaps even when you finished the screenplay and assembled your cast and crew and began production."

That's not polite industry small talk. That's a heavyweight director genuinely fired up about what he just saw. And now Anderson's film has edged past Munich's lifetime global total. If anyone would be genuinely delighted by that, it's probably Spielberg.

Did Spielberg's shout move the needle?

Short answer: it sure didn't hurt. One Battle After Another hasn't been a box office heater, but after Spielberg's rave started circulating, the film caught a nice wave of attention. It trended, people argued about it, and that kind of high-profile tip of the hat is the kind of marketing you can't buy. Awards chatter followed, because of course it did.

A quick, fun Munich tidbit

While making Munich, Eric Bana has said he and Spielberg helped nudge Daniel Craig toward taking James Bond. Not exactly a small ripple effect for a 'political thriller' shoot.

So, about that Oscar 'curse'

Anderson's long, complicated run with the Academy is well documented, and One Battle After Another now has the receipts — strong reviews, solid audience scores, and a global haul that just topped a Spielberg classic. Whether that translates into actual wins at the 2026 Oscars is the part we don't know yet. But it's in the conversation, loudly.

Where to watch

Munich is available to buy or rent on Amazon. One Battle After Another is currently playing in theaters in the U.S.