While Paul Thomas Anderson is considered to be one of the greatest directors of his generation, his films typically have limited commercial appeal. Prior to Anderson’s latest release, the epic action thriller film One Battle After Another, the highest-grossing film of Anderson’s career was the 2017 epic period drama film There Will Be Blood, which finished its theatrical run with a worldwide box-office gross of just over $77 million, a total that One Battle After Another surpassed in just its second weekend of release.
In its opening weekend of domestic release, One Battle After Another grossed $22.4 million, which easily marks the best box-office weekend of Anderson’s career, beating the $5.7 million that Magnolia earned for its opening weekend in wide release in early 2010. However, while this represents a major commercial breakthrough for Anderson, the current box-office trajectory of One Battle After Another is relatively underwhelming for a film that carries a reported production cost of $130 million. Indeed, while One Battle After Another achieved box-office victory in its opening weekend of release, amid glorious reviews and weak competition, it could still lose the box-office war.
The Box-Office Battle Is Far From Over for ‘One Battle After Another’
With its awe-inspiring car chases and gun battle sequences, along with a distinctive assortment of interesting characters and performances, the universally acclaimed One Battle After Another is easily the most commercially appealing and purely entertaining film of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, especially as led by the magnetic presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, who stars as Bob Ferguson, aka “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, a washed-up fugitive and revolutionary who struggles to protect his daughter from a corrupt military official.
While the $22.4 million domestic opening for One Battle After Another fell squarely in the middle of the opening-weekend projection, the most important box-office metric for the 162-minute One Battle After Another, which grossed $26.1 million at the international box office in its opening weekend of release, was the degree to which it held its audience in its second weekend of release. A key comparable here is DiCaprio’s last theatrical release, the nearly three-and-a-half-hour-long 2023 epic crime drama film Killers of the Flower Moon, which, after a $23 million domestic opening, experienced a 60% drop in its second weekend of domestic release, on its way to a domestic total of $68 million, and a worldwide total of over $158 million, against a production cost of over $200 million.
One Battle After Another grossed $11.1 million in its second weekend of domestic release, a drop of 49%. While this is a respectable second-weekend hold, it doesn’t inspire confidence that One Battle After Another will be able to surpass the $100 million mark at the domestic box office, unless Warner Bros. keeps the film in theaters through the awards season, for which One Battle After Another seems assured of receiving multiple Academy Award nominations and therefore possibly accumulating significantly more box-office revenue. Otherwise, while One Battle After Another has easily become the highest-grossing film of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, it hasn’t demonstrated the box-office staying power with which to justify its oversized production cost.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bankable Stardom Boosted ‘One Battle After Another’
While One Battle After Another, which presently holds a 96% Rotten Tomatoes rating, has undoubtedly been helped at the box office by the stupendous word-of-mouth support that the film has received, the film’s $22.4 million domestic opening is primarily attributable to the star power of Leonardo DiCaprio, for whom One Battle After Another marks his 11th feature-starring vehicle to earn more than $20 million in its opening weekend of domestic release. This feat is especially impressive when considering that all of these vehicles are non-franchise titles, from Titanic to The Revenant.
With the possible exception of Tom Cruise, DiCaprio is the only current star whose attachment to a film brings a definite box-office opening guarantee. Without DiCaprio, and the $22.4 million baseline that his presence established, the box-office performance of One Battle After Another almost certainly would have followed the same niche, range-bound formula that’s defined Anderson’s career, even with crowd-pleasing masterpieces like There Will Be Blood, which finished its theatrical run with a relatively modest domestic total of just over $40 million, despite being universally regarded as being one of the greatest films ever made.
‘One Battle After Another’ Will Struggle to Break Even
Through its third weekend of release, One Battle After Another has a worldwide box-office total gross of approximately $138 million. With its $130 million production cost, along with a marketing cost of $70 million, One Battle After Another has to accumulate a worldwide box-office gross of at least $300 million just to reach its break-even point in terms of theatrical profitability.
If One Battle After Another reaches this threshold, it will be as a slow-burning Academy Award favorite that generates the same impressive box-office multiple as such Best Picture winners as the 2012 historical political thriller film Argo, which, after a $19.4 million domestic opening, finished its theatrical run with a domestic total of $136 million. Another comparable is the Best Picture-winning and Leonardo DiCaprio-starring 2006 crime thriller film The Departed, which had a $26.8 million domestic opening, on its way to a $132 million final total.
While this presently seems unlikely, the undeniable intrinsic value of the prestige of winning Oscar gold seems to be omnipresent with One Battle After Another, which is currently projected to equal All About Eve, La La Land, and Titanic with a record-tying 14 Academy Award nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture nominations for Paul Thomas Anderson, who seems destined to win his long-awaited first Academy Award for his most commercially successful film.
- Release Date
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September 26, 2025
- Runtime
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162 minutes
- Producers
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Adam Somner