All the Dads In the World Help ‘The Amateur’ Recover Its Reported Budget at Global Box Office
Sandwiched between the blockbusters Sinners and A Minecraft Movie, and a host of faith-based projects such as The King of Kings and The Chosen: Last Supper trilogy, the espionage thriller The Amateur continued to attract a very specific demographic to theaters in its second weekend of release. The movie grossed around $14 million domestically, retaining a spot inside the top five of the domestic box office charts, as it successfully recovered its production budget theatrically. Not too long ago, director Steven Soderbergh’s similarly positioned Black Bag under-performed commercially, despite excellent reviews.
The marketplace isn’t conducive to mid-budget films aimed at adult audiences, despite the odd hit such as A Complete Unknown last year. But that movie, starring Timothée Chalamet, had Oscars attention going in its favor. The Amateur, on the other hand, comes across as a “Dad Movie” — the sort of thing that audiences might postpone watching until it hits the PVOD market. Produced on a reported budget of $60 million, The Amateur has grossed nearly $30 million domestically, and a cumulative global total of $64 million so far.
It marks the first starring role for Rami Malek since his Oscar-winning performance in the musical biopic Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Freddie Mercury in that film, which made over $900 million worldwide. Malek subsequently played the villain in Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movie, No Time to Die, which grossed over $770 million worldwide. He also played a small but pivotal role in Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-winning biopic Oppenheimer, which grossed nearly $1 billion globally a couple of years ago.
‘The Amateur’ Is Quite a Crowd-Pleaser
Directed by James Hawes, The Amateur opened to mixed reviews, but excellent audience scores. It holds a barely “fresh” 61% approval rating on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, but its audience rating stands at a far superior 88%. In his review, Collider’s Jeff Ewing described the movie “a little slower and more introspective than one might imagine, but strong performances and some well-executed (but occasionally logic-straining) plot twists and set-pieces elevate the film into something well worth seeing.” Also starring Rachel Brosnahan and Laurence Fishburne, The Amateur is playing in theaters now. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
