Nearly a month into its theatrical run, director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s critically acclaimed new film, One Battle After Another, has established itself as a modest hit at the box office. The movie hasn’t quite broken out like some of its star Leonardo DiCaprio‘s past hits — movies like The Revenant and The Wolf of Wall Street — but considering how oppressive the ecosystem is these days, there’s something to be said about it having recovered its reported budget, and then some. This past weekend, One Battle After Another passed the $160 million milestone at the global box office and overtook a handful of older titles. One of them is Midway, the Dunkirk dupe directed by Roland Emmerich in 2019.
Featuring a star-studded cast that included Woody Harrelson, Ed Skrein, Tadanobu Asano, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Aaron Eckhart, and more, Midway grossed just $127 million worldwide, against a reported budget of $100 million. Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk also cost a similar amount, but made over $400 million more. Midway continued Emmerich’s disappointing box office streak, following the commercial failure of his forgotten thriller Anonymous, the actioner White House Down, the drama Stonewall, and the legacy sequel Independence Day: Resurgence. After Midway, he went on to make another big-budget bomb, Moonfall.
In addition to its poor box office performance, Midway also received disappointing reviews. Based on a real-life operation that has often been dramatized by Hollywood, the movie is now sitting at a 42% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “Midway revisits a well-known story with modern special effects and a more balanced point of view, but its screenplay isn’t quite ready for battle.” It concluded its domestic run with $56 million, a number that has now been overtaken by One Battle After Another. Anderson’s film has also overtaken Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon at the global box office, although it’s still around $4 million shy of passing it domestically.
‘One Battle After Another’ Is An Oscars Front-Runner
One Battle After Another is the most expensive film of Anderson’s career, with a reported price tag of $140 million. A war movie of a very different kind, it holds a “certified fresh” 95% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes and is the front-runner to win the Best Picture Oscar in a few months. Also starring Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Chase Infiniti, and others, the movie is playing in theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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September 26, 2025
- Runtime
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162 minutes
- Director
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Paul Thomas Anderson
- Writers
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Paul Thomas Anderson, Thomas Pynchon
- Producers
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Adam Somner
