Despite critical acclaim and two years' worth of anticipation, Steven Spielberg's lavish West Side Story revival made little noise at the box office, debuting with $10.5 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday—a worrisome result for a movie industry struggling to recapture its finger-snapping rhythm. A dazzling widescreen adaptation and Spielberg's first musical, West Side Story was one of the year's most eagerly awaited titles, the AP reports. With a script by Tony Kushner and Rita Moreno returning to her breakthrough film 60 years later, the $100 million film epitomizes a grand-scale prestige film that Hollywood infrequently produces anymore.
West Side Story hit theaters on a wave of glowing reviews and expectations that it could play a starring role in March's Academy Awards. But the film faces a challenging marketplace for both adult-driven releases and musicals. Audiences have steadily returned to multiplexes in the second year of the pandemic, but older moviegoers, who made up the bulk of ticket-buyers for Spielberg's latest, have been among the slowest to return. Musicals, too, have struggled to catch on in theaters.
Starring newcomer Rachel Zegler and Ansel Elgort as Maria and Tony, West Side Story took in $4.4 million in 37 overseas territories. Because the film includes a transgender character, it was banned in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait. David Gross, who runs the movie consultancy Franchise Entertainment, called the opening soft. "If West Side Story is going to be profitable, it will need to connect internationally as well domestically," Gross said in an email. Second place for the weekend went to Disney's animated Encanto, which held strongly in its third week, dropping only 27% from the previous weekend. It grossed $9.6 from Friday to Sunday, bringing its cumulative total to $71.3 million domestically and $80.5 million internationally.
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