Jacob Elordi’s $75M Star Test Opens to $8M. What Went Wrong?

Woof.

Disney’s The Dog Stars — Ridley Scott’s 20th Century Studios post-apocalyptic drama with Jacob Elordi and Margaret Qualley — flopped during its debut weekend, finishing in fifth place with just $8 million in North American ticket sales.

“This type of movie is a tweener where it’s hard to figure out who it’s even for — it wasn’t sold as a blockbuster action movie, and it didn’t have a big hook like A Quiet Place or 28 Days Later,” says Christopher Rosen. “And it also isn’t an awards-y thing, where you could be like, ‘It’s a very serious movie you have to go see if you’re a cinephile who cares about the Oscars.’ I just think it was not really for anybody, unfortunately.”

Disney shifted The Dog Stars from its original release date in late March — roughly six weeks after Elordi topped the box office as co-star of Wuthering Heights amid his awards run as a best supporting actor nominee for Frankenstein — to the last weekend in August. It was a curious choice, notes Sean McNulty, especially because Elordi’s ability to open a movie has never been tested.

“They were playing this as an action movie; that was the track they took in the marketing,” Sean says. But Elordi’s previous screen roles have come in projects that skewed toward women, like Wuthering Heights, Priscilla and his YA breakthrough in The Kissing Booth franchise. He’s never appeared in a major action thriller like The Dog Stars, which reportedly cost around $75 million.

“I don’t know that I put the opening entirely on him,” adds Sean. “But I also don’t think he was bringing anybody to this movie who was like, ‘Elordi’s in it; I’m gonna check it out.’” 

To that end, opening-night demographics skewed slightly male — 55 percent to 45 percent — with women under 25 making up only six percent of the audience.

“They could have played up the Margaret Qualley angle, the love story of the movie — but they didn’t really lean into that at all,” Sean says. “Which I get. You don’t hire Ridley Scott to make the post-apocalyptic romantic movie; but that would have been your other option here.”

While The Dog Stars wound up in the dog house, the box office story this weekend was largely positive. With Spider-Man: Brand New Day leading again in its fifth weekend of release, the overall summer box office remains in reach of the all-time summer record — it’s about $130 million shy heading into Labor Day. And Ketchup Entertainment’s Coyote vs. Acme — which the distributor acquired for $50 million after Warner Bros. and David Zaslav canceled its release — opened above expectations with $15 million in second place. “It’s the little movie that could that Warner Bros. didn’t want,” says Sean.