Warners’ 9-Film No. 1 Streak Left at ‘The Bride!’ Altar

Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy’s big swing strategy means an inevitable miss

They all can’t be Sinners.

Following an unprecedented run of success — including nine consecutive No. 1 openings with titles ranging from A Minecraft Movie to Wuthering Heights — Warner Bros. whiffed over the weekend with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, an expensive misfire that fell short of even modest expectations.

“You take big swings, you’re going to miss a couple of them,” Sean McNulty says. Reviews for the film — which is loosely based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel but reimagined by Gyllenhaal as a 1930s-set fugitive road trip — were largely negative (59 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a C+ CinemaScore grade from audiences), and it ultimately grossed just $7.6 million in North America.

“I’m not faulting them, I’m not saying it’s a bad decision — it’s just that Maggie Gyllenhaal hasn’t done this kind of film on this kind of scale,” Sean adds, “so you’re taking a bet on a filmmaker stepping up, which is always certainly a risk.”

With a reported budget of $90 million, The Bride! is the first outright flop for Warner Bros. film bosses Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy in a year.

“I can see the vision: They probably thought it’s going to be a Joker-type movie,” Christopher Rosen says about the pitch for Gyllenhaal’s punk rock-meets-Bonnie & Clyde attempt at recasting the Frankenstein myth for the modern era. “But instead it was more Joker: Folie à Deux.”

Fortunately, for Pixar, the story this weekend was much brighter. The Disney-owned animation studio’s Hoppers opened in first place with $46 million, the best debut for the studio on an original project since Coco in 2017.

“It’s a big win,” says Sean. “Could this be a new franchise? The weeks ahead will certainly tell that story.”