This weekend, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another crossed the $100 million mark at the global box office, picking up $58 million internationally, adding to the $42 million domestic. Had the film cost around $50 million, it would be in a great position to win Best Picture. It cost between $130-$150 million. If it won, it would be the second-highest budget film to win since Titanic. Does that even matter?
It didn’t entirely bomb, and it looks like it will do a little better than Killers of the Flower Moon, which means it should, at least, break even. Maybe it will do even more business if it’s in the box office come awards time. China might push the movie even further into the green.
From Box Office Mojo: 
The reason it would win, however, would not be at the box office. It would be used as a weapon against Donald Trump. In that way, the box office might be immaterial, at what cost “resistance”?
Here is Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro:
There is blood in Paul Thomas Anderson’s $130M-$140M production of One Battle After Anotherwhich is clearing $100.7M global with an offshore cume of $58.9M and a domestic hold of $11.1M (-49%) for a running total of $42.8M. As we told you previously, the movie stands to make more worldwide than DiCaprio’s previous Killers of the Flower Moon ($158.7M), which dropped -60% in its second stateside weekend making $9.3M. While Battle is still powered by the coasts, the premium, VistaVision and 70MM theaters (of which there were Imax this weekend at $1.1M for a $7.4M running cume in the format) are the pic’s ammunition. One Batter After Another, despite ceding Imax to Disney’s Tron Ares next weekend, will continue to hold VistaVision, 70MM and some PLFs in its third go-round. The anticipation is for the movie to pop back into Imax again and again as it heads deeper into awards season.
The movie won’t be seen as a loss for WB, at least in layman’s terms, which is how voters typically decide things. It seems likely that we can remove box office revenue from the list as a factor, though I am still stuck on the idea that Titanic is the most expensive movie ever to win, and it grossed what, billions? And One Battle would be the second most expensive, and if it’s lucky, it gets to $200 mil.
Then again, we are living through a time when Hollywood — especially the Oscars — has walled itself off into a kind of bubble that is far removed from the practical aspects of both real life in America and the free market. Ratings don’t matter. Box office doesn’t matter. The popularity of stars doesn’t matter. What matters is only status inside utopia.
AD’s Scott Kernen has long been comparing One Battle to Everything Everywhere All At Once, as it reflects the Woketopia’s worldview to a level that produces a kind of euphoric reaction. I can see them all, the Jane Fondas, the Jamie Lee Curtis’ and Meryl Streeps leaping to their feet with teary adulation at this movie winning, not so much because Paul Thomas Anderson would finally make good, but because the movie is the embodiment of everything they believe. Kernen has also drawn the comparison to The Shape of Water, which also seemed to resonate with the right message at the right time.
I think he’s onto something with One Battle in that way, even though I don’t think it is as good as the critics say it is, and I find it simplistic in its storytelling. I personally think Sinners is the movie that should run away with the whole season — my god, people, look at yourselves by now — but it isn’t as much of an EFF YOU to Trump as One Battle, not to mention an EFF YOU to the half of the country that voted for him. They lost the election, but they could win at the Oscars, just like Moonlight (as Kernen also pointed out).
Paul Thomas Anderson will become the hero for the day for de-centering white men from the narrative and elevating marginalized groups. But also, he’s overdue and beloved, so it’s green lights everywhere you look — but for the nagging problem of the film’s budget. Does the Academy even care by now? That is the question, and I don’t know the answer to that.
There is always the chance the movie derails spectacularly, like Emilia Perez did last year, but it is doubtful. We still have months to go yet — I still think Hamnet might also take some of them away from the current politics. We’ll see how it goes.
