Home / Arts and Entertainment / Frankenstein's Monster Flops: Box Office Bomb!
Frankenstein's Monster Flops: Box Office Bomb!
8 Mar
Summary
- The Bride! movie grossed $7.3 million domestically and $13.6 million globally.
- Production costs were $90 million, with $65 million for marketing.
- The film received middling reviews and poor audience scores.
Maggie Gyllenhaal's "The Bride!," a feminist reinterpretation of "The Bride of Frankenstein," has dramatically underperformed at the box office. The film garnered only $7.3 million in its opening weekend domestically and a mere $13.6 million worldwide. This is a substantial deficit considering the reported $90 million production budget and an additional $65 million allocated for marketing expenses.
The film's poor performance is attributed to several factors, including middling critical reviews and frighteningly bad audience scores, evidenced by a "C+" on CinemaScore. Warner Bros. had projected a domestic opening of $16 million to $18 million, making the actual results a significant miss and ending the studio's nine-film winning streak.
Originally slated for an October 2025 release, the film was moved to early March 2026, a move Variety suggests might have hurt its appeal. This date shift was also intended to distance it from Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein," which had a strong presence in the cultural conversation following its release last August. The R-rated, genre-bending crime story with arthouse ambitions was considered too expensive for its market.
Warner Bros. defended the film's bold swing, but the financial outcome highlights a challenge for the studio. Despite positive outcomes from films like "Sinners," other gambles such as "Joker: Folie à Deux" and "Mickey 17" also resulted in substantial losses. "The Bride!" suffered from a lack of compelling marketing, with the director focusing on screening issues rather than audience attraction, while star Jessie Buckley was occupied with awards circuit duties for "Hamnet."
