Following its premiere at TIFF 2019 earlier this month and an onslaught of scathing reviews, it seems The Goldfinch was doomed to fail at the box office.
In its opening weekend, the onscreen adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel pulled in just over US$2.68 million in North America, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
That box office figure may sound like a lot to some, but considering the nearly $45-million budget spent to make The Goldfinch, the film’s distribution company, Warner Bros., might suffer a major loss in the end.
The John Crowley-directed film was reportedly screened at more than 2,500 cinemas across the continent. As reported by the BBC, it saw one of the worst opening weekends in film history since 1982.
Ahead of its release, Amazon made a $16- to $18-million deal with Warner Bros. to secure The Goldfinch for Amazon Prime, however the purchase may have set the corporate giant back a bit as well.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, several box office analysts predict The Goldfinch may face losses of up to $50 million in total between both companies.
Global News has reached out to Amazon seeking comment.
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When asked to comment on the situation, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution Jeff Goldstein told Variety: “I think the audience wasn’t interested in seeing this literary work on screen.”
Goldstein added: “There were many things that didn’t work, but the biggest was probably the marketplace. The gap between the have and the have-nots is growing even bigger.”
WATCH: The second official trailer for John Crowley’s film adaptation of ‘The Goldfinch’ novel
Initially, Tartt, 55, published The Goldfinch in 2013. It was met with an abundance of positive reviews.
The coming-of-age novel focuses on protagonist Theodore Decker (portrayed on screen by Ansel Elgort) who, as a 13-year-old boy, survived a terrorist attack at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
His mother did not survive the attack and was killed by a bomb explosion. In a panic, the young Decker takes a small painting called The Goldfinch and keeps it by his side for years as a comfort while hiding the fact that he stole it.
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While the two-and-a-half-hour film featured an all-star cast for its lead roles, including Nicole Kidman, Finn Wolfhard, Oakes Fegley, Sarah Paulson and Luke Wilson, it seems the highly successful book did not garner enough attention for a successful run at the box office.
On the other hand, It: Chapter Two — another current Warner Bros. release — kept its No. 1 spot atop the box office charts for the second week in a row as it raked in more than $40 million over the weekend.
The second and final part of the two-film adaptation of Stephen King‘s legendary horror novel has already earned more than $153 million across the continent.
In a New York Daily News interview with King, 71, he said The Goldfinch was “very good” and added that fellow author Tartt was “an amazingly good writer, dense, allusive” and “a gorgeous storyteller.”
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The Goldfinch is now playing in cinemas across Canada.
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