A24 is one of the biggest brands in Hollwyood.
Known for its unique strategy for both making and marketing of its movies, A24 has been very successful with both fans and Critics.
But being successful is not easy, in Hollywood, you need to do experiments, a lot of experiments, and even after decades of sucess, A24 has suffered some major losses.
Below is the list of Failed A24 Projects
The Smashing Machine (2025): Budgeted at around $50 million, this MMA drama starring Dwayne Johnson fell short with roughly $20 million worldwide, failing to recoup costs.
Key Factors Behind the Box Office Failure
- Audience Mismatch: General moviegoers and fans of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson expected a typical, triumphant blockbuster action movie. Instead, director Benny Safdie delivered a raw, deeply uncomfortable, and slow-paced independent drama focusing on pain, addiction, and vulnerability.
- High Financial Stakes: A24 spent roughly $50 million to produce the movie and opted for a wide theatrical release in over 3,300 theaters. Because it was not a traditional four-quadrant crowd-pleaser, it needed well over $100 million to break even, a milestone rarely hit by prestige or arthouse dramas.
- Weak Word-of-Mouth: Despite earning strong critical praise and festival buzz at the Venice Film Festival, paying audiences gave the film a lukewarm “B-” CinemaScore on exit polls, causing ticket sales to plunge rapidly after opening day
Highest 2 Lowest (2025): Spike Lee’s Denzel Washington-led crime thriller became a high-profile box-office bomb despite a festival premiere.
Why the Film Struggled
- Abbreviated Theatrical Window: Studios gave the movie minimal marketing and a brief theatrical run before sending it quickly to streaming on Apple TV+, tanking its box-office potential.
- Comparison to the Original: Critics and viewers felt it paled heavily in comparison to Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, losing the nuanced social tension of the source material.
- Mixed Reception: While star power from Denzel Washington and Spike Lee drove initial interest, the uneven script, heavy-handed editing, and lack of suspense led to poor word-of-mouth.
Opus (2025): Pitched as a tense psychological thriller with John Malkovich, it grossed only $5 million against a $25 million budget.
The psychological horror movie starring Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich bombed financially and critically: [1, 2]
- Box Office Disaster: It grossed a meager $1 million during its opening week against a conservative projection of $2 million to $4 million.
- Derivative and Predictable Plot: Film critics on Rotten Tomatoes noted the script was heavily unoriginal, thinly replicating better-received horror features like The Menu and Midsommar.
- Shallow Character Development: Outside of the two lead actors, the supporting characters were written so oblivious and superficial that it broke audience immersion and drained the movie of any real suspense.
Beau is Afraid (2023): Ari Aster’s surreal $35 million dark comedy grossed under $12 million globally, making it an expensive misfire.
Why the Movie Failed at the Box Office
- Intense runtime and pacing: The film ran for nearly three hours, making repeat viewings or casual mainstream attendance rare.
- Misleading marketing: Trailers pitched it as a quirky, suspenseful dark comedy adventure, whereas the actual film was an overwhelming, deeply abstract exploration of guilt and anxiety.
- Lack of traditional horror: Unlike Hereditary and Midsommar, which used accessible horror tropes to draw crowds, Beau Is Afraid traded scares for confounding surrealism and tragicomedy.
- Limited theatrical rollout: A24 initially ran a very limited opening weekend platform release instead of an immediate wide launch, stalling early momentum outside major metropolitan areas.