In a turn of events that perhaps bothers Steven Spielberg least of all, it looks like The Fabelmans isn’t going to be shaking things up at the box office. Having made only $3.4 million in just under a week, Spielberg’s long-touted Oscars darling will likely be putting more butts in seats at the Academy Awards than in cinemas.
Recommended VideosIt’s hard to imagine the filmmaker having much of a care in the world for his film’s box office performance; being a semi-autobiographical work with a deeply personal subject to boot, the auteur seems more than happy to simply have gotten The Fabelmans out to the world, and the cinephiles out there will no doubt be thanking him in spades.
It wasn’t long, however, before the conversation surrounding blockbusters and box offices started cropping up again, sparked by one user pointing out that Spielberg, largely credited as the father of blockbusters thanks to Jaws, is facing box office struggles as superhero movies continue to allegedly hog the market in a development that mirrors the age-old story of a genius being destroyed by his own creation.
Spielberg helping create the blockbuster and then having his most personal project become a financial failure due to blockbusters monopolizing the film industry feels kinda like a Greek tragedy in a sense.
— haususpiria.tumblr.com🏴👻📽📼(EEAAO sweep) (@haususpiria91) November 29, 2022One user argued that blockbuster films are the only reason theaters are surviving nowadays, which isn’t an outrageous take by any stretch; if superhero stories and other adjacent big budget offerings just up and vanished, the odds that those same audiences would be lining up for the likes of The Fabelmans or The Irishman, to name a few, are realistically quite low.
It's not that people are going to see blockbusters instead of smaller films. It's that blockbusters are the only thing people are interested in seeing in the theater at all. Which makes sense; why bother to go out and watch a movie when you have thousands of movies at home?
— Human Being (Parody Account) 🐀 (@CuvisLives) November 29, 2022Others simply blamed the lack of The Fabelmans‘ box office success on poor marketing, citing the sparsity of the trailers and promotional materials, as well as perceiving the ones they did see as inefficient at conveying what the film was about.
There was almost no advertising for it. If I wasn't on film Twitter would have completely missed it.
— @[email protected] 🏳️🌈 (@catrathustra) November 29, 2022I am still trying to figure out the name from the comments. 😂
— Faux Mancunian (@kaeviv) November 29, 2022The movie hasn’t been promoted seemingly at all. I didn’t even know about it until like 2 weeks ago lmao
— Alec Luis (@alecluis1993) November 29, 2022Spielberg made a new movie?
— Meursault Gusmão (@Gusmao_pedro1) November 29, 2022But, if the projections are accurate, The Fabelmans will be having the last laugh when it begins cleaning up at the Oscars, and we’ll all swiftly be reminded that at the end of the day, the true measure of a film will never be how much money it makes, but how staunchly it lights up the souls of those who see it.
The Fabelmans is currently playing in theaters.
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