Box Office: ‘Megalopolis’ Bombs With D+ CinemaScore, ‘Wild Robot’ Soaring to No. 1

DreamWorks Animation and Universal’s family film The Wild Robot is charming reviewers and audiences alike, boasting both a stellar 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score and a 98 percent audience score, not to mention an A CinemaScore from moviegoers. Thanks to great word of mouth, Wild Robot came in No. 1 with an estimated $35 million.

If only the love were being spread around.

Francis Ford Coppola — in one of the low points of his long and illustrious career — is watching his new movie Megalopolis get almost utterly rejected by moviegoers (it was likewise maligned by many critics). The film received a disastrous D+ CinemaScore from audiences and only cleared an estimated $4 million in its domestic debut (many rivals predict final numbers will be lower). Heading into the weekend, tracking and Lionsgate expected it to do at least $5 million to $7 million.

While The Wild Robot came in ahead of tracking, many had predicted the film would do big business, particularly after Paramount and Hasbro Entertainment’s fellow PG animated film Transformers One opened behind expectations last weekend.

Wild Robot is based on Peter Brown’s beloved best-seller about a robot nicknamed ROZ who forms an unexpected bond with an orphaned gosling and other creatures after being shipwrecked on a lonely island. Oscar nominee Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods) directed and wrote the movie, which tells a story of the bridge between nature and technology. The high-profile voice cast is led by Lupita Nyong’o, Kit Connor, Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy and Stephanie Hsu, alongside Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Ving Rhames.

Overseas, the CGI-animated pic earned another $9.9 million from 29 markets for an early foreign total of $18.1 million and $53.1 million globally.

Tim Burton’s hit sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice came in third with $16 million for a domestic total of $258.1 million. It’s doing less business overseas, where it has earned $123.2 million for a global total of $373.3 million.

Paramount and Hasbro Entertainment’s Transformers One — which had hoped to get fanboys in addition to kids and parents — fell a steep 62 percent in its second outing to an estimated $9.3 million for a 10-day domestic total of $39.2 million.

In a surprise twist, the Indian Telugu-language action film Devara: Part 1 placed fourth domestically with an estimated $5.5 million.

Blumhouse and Universal’s Speak No Evil rounded out with top five with $4.3 million in its third weekend for a domestic total of $28.1 million.

Megalopolis is looking at a sixth-place finish. As revered as Coppola is, no major Hollywood studio would sign on to finance or distribute the pricey $120 million film in North America after seeing the film at an early buyer’s screening before its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where it drew mostly meh reviews. Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf star in Coppola’s epic reimagining of the Roman Empire in modern-day New York City on the brink of ruin.

Lionsgate ultimately signed on to release the movie domestically but isn’t on the hook for distribution or marketing costs. Imax is also in Coppola’s corner after the director used Imax-certified cameras to shoot portions of the movie, with Megalopolis booked to play in roughly 200 Imax theaters, or about half the large-format’s circuit, during select showtimes.

Megalopolis would have been stranded without Imax, which is reporting $1.8 million in ticket sales for the film, including $1.4 million domestically.

Last week, Coppola compared the film’s storyline to the current political situation in the U.S. before a screening of his new film at the New York Film Festival, suggesting that the 2024 presidential election may mirror the downfall of Rome. His comments were streamed into 65 cinemas across the U.S. and Canada with support from Imax.

If Coppola was hoping to rev up detractors of the Republican presidential nominee, it didn’t work.

Nor, as it turns it, are fans of Trump rushing out to see Vindicating Trump, the latest documentary from conservative pundit and Trump supporter Dinesh D’Souza that examines the obstacles facing the GOP nominee in his bid to reclaim the Oval Office.

D’Souza’s doc — made in cooperation with Trump, who has been personally plugging the film — is playing in 813 theaters domestically but didn’t get much traction, earning less than $1 million, or $762,000, to place 15th. Faith-based distributor SDG, home of the record-breaking mockumentary Am I Racist?, is handling Vindicating Trump in North America. Highlights include D’Souza interviewing Trump after a would-be assassin’s bullet clipped Trump’s ear.

At the specialty box office, Sony opened Jason Reitman‘s Saturday Night — a love letter to the long-running NBC sketch-comedy show Saturday Night Live timed to its 50th anniversary season — in five locations in New York and Los Angeles. The film is reported a promising per-location average of $53,000.

Amazon MGM Studios’ acclaimed specialty film My Old Ass expanded into more than 1,700 theaters, earning $1.6 million for an early domestic cume of $2.9 million.

Sept. 29, 7:45 a.m.: Updated with revised estimates.

This story was originally published Sept. 28 at 8:56 a.m.