Leonardo DiCaprio’s new movie, “One Battle After Another,” which has been blasted by conservatives as “an apologia for radical left-wing terrorism,” is reportedly struggling to recoup its budget at the box office.
Directed by 11-time Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson, the 162-minute thriller has received rave reviews by critics and mainstream audiences alike, even eliciting praise from industry heavyweights like Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
However, according to the Daily Mail, the film, with a reported budget of $175 million, is having difficulty turning a profit.
“One Battle After Another” has already grossed more than $100 million at the box office – a career best for Anderson – but it’s unclear if it will be able to make back its budget and then some.
“This movie has a chance of getting to profitability if it lasts long enough in theaters and/or overperforms abroad,” David A. Gross, who heads the box office intelligence firm Franchise Entertainment Research, told Variety.
“It's going to get a lot of awards nominations, but that's two to three months away and unlikely to help this immediate release,” he added.
The film is reportedly a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland” and tells the story of a paranoid ex-revolutionary (DiCaprio) who lives in a drug-induced state off the grid with his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). When she goes missing, he must reunite with his former left-wing rebels to save her from a white nationalist military officer (Sean Penn).
Unapologetically political, the film opens with a raid on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility to free detainees as government agents execute unarmed suspects.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said the indie release has “the subtlety of a brick” and predicted it will win “all the Academy Awards” due to its politics.
“You can make excuses for it, but basically the [film is] an apologia for radical left-wing terrorism, that’s what it is,” Shapiro said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “The basic suggestion is a conspiracy theory in which the United States is run by white supremacist Christian nationalists and all people of color and a few nice incompetent fellow travelers like [DiCaprio’s character] are going to take on that entire system.
"And that system must be taken on at the cost of family, at the cost of friendship, at the cost of decency, at the cost of basic human capacity for success.
"It is better, in other words, to be a complete loser who wastes your life bombing things randomly in order to free illegal immigrants to run willy-nilly across the border than to be a productive citizen.”
The Blaze said that the movie “may not be entertaining, but its celebration of vitriol and murder is clarifying.”
“This is not the usual ‘anti-conservative’ Hollywood bias,” the outlet said. “When the perpetually sweaty DiCaprio shouts ‘¡Viva la revolución!’ while detonating bombs, you’re meant to cheer.
"If you’re not cheering, well, those bombs are meant for you. … Increasingly, Hollywood views half the country not as fellow citizens with outdated beliefs, but as enemies who deserve punishment.
"Owning firearms, favoring borders, voting differently — these aren’t policy differences; they’re treated as moral crimes, grounds for extermination.”
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