‘One Battle After Another’ Begins With $2.5M Thursday Previews

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros‘ original Leonardo DiCaprio movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another, is posting previews around $2.5M with potential for upside according to sources.

We keep hearing that advance tickets sales in cities continues to grow.

Tonight’s estimated figure isn’t far from the preview night of DiCaprio’s last movie, Apple Original Films’ Killers of the Flower Moon, which posted $2.6M on its first Thursday evening, turning into a $9.4M Friday and 3-day of $23.2M. Now that was during the 2023 strikes when the cast couldn’t promote, not to mention that Martin Scorsese directed feature take of the bestselling novel was 3 hours and 26 minutes long. One Battle After Another is considerably shorter at 2 hours and 41 minutes (and, man, does it move at a clip).

Now, Thursday previews for One Battle After Another, which started at 2PM today in 3,200 locations are under that of Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 DiCaprio movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which did $5.8M off showtimes that started at 4PM. That R-rated movie morphed into a first Friday of $16.7M, and $41M 3-day, a record domestic opening for Tarantino. That movie had the added boost of an early August release date, as well as the marquee power of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. Once Upon a Time..also had a long tail in regards to its word of mouth, blasting off with a worldwide Cannes premiere at the start of summer.

The Rotten Tomatoes Audience score for One Battle After Another stands at 87% which is higher than a slew of DiCaprio fan faves, i.e. The Revenant (84%), Killers of the Flower Moon (84%), Wolf of Wall Street (83%), and even Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (70%). Among Anderson movies, One Battle After Another is heads and tails higher than the helmer’s last movie, 2021’s Licorice Pizza (65%), as well as a point ahead of the 2x Oscar winner There Will Be Blood (86%), but under Boogie Nights and Magnolia which both stand at 89%. More updates in the AM.

One Battle After Another is expected to file in the low $20M range stateside off its $130M-$140M production cost. The movie’s fate will be determined in the long run. Warners opted to skip the spotlight of the fall film festival troika after Joker: Folie a Deux ran into a buzzsaw at Venice last year. The studio began screening One Battle After Another just as press were returning from Toronto. A win this weekend for One Battle After Another is a win for original theatrical films in the streaming era.