Jenna Ortega's New Sci-Fi Movie Klara and the Sun Officially Bombs After Being Pulled From More Than 1,000 Theaters

While DC's Clayface took the number-one spot in its box-office debut this past weekend, a string of new releases settled for lower spots on the list. For instance, LAIKA's new offering, Wildwood, took the third spot with an $11 million haul, while the buzzy comedy Wicker grossed nearly $6 million in a relatively limited rollout. Two awards contenders — The Only Living Pickpocket in New York and Fatherland — debuted in six and four theaters, respectively, and delivered the weekend's biggest per-theater averages. However, the most disappointing performance of any new release this weekend came from Taika Waititi's new film.

The dystopian sci-fi movie was probably designed as an awards contender in the vein of Waititi's Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit. However, the filmmaker has had a rather precipitous decline in reputation since then, having made Thor: Love and Thunder and the troubled sports drama Next Goal Wins. Waititi's new movie was supposed to be released in nearly 2,000 theaters this week, but poor reviews and unexpected competition convinced Sony to take the platform release strategy. It was eventually rolled out in around 800 theaters — roughly the same number as last week's A24 documentary You Can See Everything.

Here's How Much Taika Waititi's New Movie Grossed at the Box Office

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However, while You Can See Everything shattered expectations and grossed $15 million in its debut weekend, Waititi's new movie — Klara and the Sun — managed to generate just $725,000. The film marks another box office disappointment for stars Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, who are coming off a string of underperformers. Based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the new film is sitting at a 25% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, "Flattening the nuanced ideas of its acclaimed source material with a tonally broad approach, Klara and the Sun aims to be endearing and inspiring but winds up being cloying and twee." Klara and the Sun is the second bomb in consecutive months for Sony after Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning. The film plummeted 85% this weekend, dooming it to a final gross of under $10 million.