Mickey 17 fails to regenerate more than 16 percent of budget at box office

Bong Joon-ho's long-delayed sci-fi thriller captured the number one spot this weekend, but did not meet expectations.

By Emma Keates  |  March 10, 2025 | 9:37am
Screenshot: Warner Bros./YouTube
Film News Box Office
Mickey 17 fails to regenerate more than 16 percent of budget at box office
Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

Unfortunately, Mickey 17 couldn’t generate audience members as quickly as it could spit out copies of Robert Pattinson. Bong Joon-ho’s looong-anticipated follow-up to Parasite opened in theaters this weekend, handily nabbing the number one spot from Captain America: Brave New World. Still, any windfall that may have resulted from the delayed gratification of the film finally hitting its many-times-moved release date seems to be a bit more delayed. (Well, hopefully.) A bunch of people may have gotten tired of waiting (or skeptical of the delayed final product), because Mickey 17 only turned around $19 million domestically. That’s just 16% of its reported $118 million budget, not to mention the extra $80 million advertising spend, per Variety. The film did make an additional $25.4 million internationally, but it has a long way to go if it hopes to make any sort of profit during its theatrical run. In total, the film needs to bring in around $275 million to $300 million globally to get into the black, the trade reports.

It’s not a particularly promising sign for Warner Bros.’ willingness to fund visionary, auteur-driven fare like this in the future. In a time in which those coffers are so thin already, the major studio actually has a decently risky slate lined up for the next few weeks. Future releases include gangster film Alto Knights, in which Robert De Niro stars opposite himself just like Pattinson in Mickey 17, and vampire flick Sinners, in which Michael B. Jordan does the same thing. We’ll see if these films do any better, and if not, what that means for more daring films (or at least projects starring the same actor twice) at the studio in the future.  

Below Mickey 17, the top 10 this week was fairly predictable. Captain America: Brave New World clocked in at number two, followed by undersea thriller Last Breath, bloody horror The Monkey, and family-friendly Paddington In Peru. Anora also managed to capitalize off its big Oscar win, jumping 15 spots from number 22 to number seven. 

Check out the rest of the top 10, courtesy of Box Office Mojo, below:

  1. Mickey 17, $19,100,000
  2. Captain America: Brave New World, $8,500,000
  3. Last Breath, $4,200,115
  4. The Monkey, $3,900,000
  5. Paddington in Peru, $3,850,000
  6. Dog Man, $3,500,000
  7. Anora, $1,860,000
  8. Mufasa: The Lion King, $1,700,000
  9. Rule Breakers, $1,593,401
  10. Night of the Zoopocalypse, $1,060,000

 
Join the discussion...