Over the weekend, Dwayne Johnson showed a much different side of himself in The Smashing Machine, a biographical sports drama about former MMA fighter Mark Kerr. The movie has garnered Johnson the best reviews of his career, and it has even sparked potential Oscar buzz for his transformative turn. A24 was likely banking on Johnson’s fans and other moviegoers being particularly interested in this transformation, but when the weekend was said and done,

The Smashing Machine debuted to the lowest opening of Johnson’s career with a mere $5.9 million. For a movie that was initially tracking to open with as high as $20 million, the result is a bit of a shock, and now the question on many people’s minds is what went wrong here?

All signs pointed to interest being potentially high when it was first announced. Having a director like Benny Safdie behind the camera with A24 backing the project showed that Johnson’s participation was a surefire sign that he was making serious strides to stretch as an actor. Moviegoers have always been intrigued when a performer goes against the grain and attempts something new.

The curiosity factor alone could get butts in the seats, and when the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival to raves for Johnson’s performance and a 15 1/2 minute standing ovation that brought him to tears, projections for the film’s opening weekend suggested one of A24’s biggest launches with about $20 million. A lot of goodwill was in place for a good opening, even if it was never meant to match some of Johnson’s bigger debuts at the box office. $20 million would’ve sufficed, but cracks began to show in the last few weeks that indicated a shift in the film’s fortunes.

While the reviews out of the Venice Film Festival were mostly complimentary, the reception out of the Toronto Film Festival was a bit different. Johnson still earned solid reviews for his performance, but some of the critical assessments began to suggest that The Smashing Machine was a by-the-numbers sports drama that didn’t exactly break the mold. In fact, out of Toronto, the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score began to dip. It’s still a respectable 73 percent fresh on the aggregator site, but it appeared that when more critics saw the film, they weren’t entirely impressed with the final result.

By the time the movie opened to the masses, this assessment from critics was pretty much common knowledge, and this could’ve affected moviegoers from wanting to give the film a shot. Certain genres can be virtually critic-proof and audiences will ignore them, but a drama that has prestige sensibilities isn’t one that usually has that kind of armor.

The Smashing Machine

Some of the blame has been put on A24 and the way they chose to market the film, with some suggesting that they didn’t do enough to promote it fully. The indie studio pumped $50 million into this production, so one would think they would be invested in marketing the movie to their fullest abilities, but something did seem off about their efforts. No one was expecting a push that larger studios such as Disney or Warner Bros. could put behind a film, but they didn’t really change their typical strategy for The Smashing Machine.

A24 has largely concentrated its efforts on digital and social media, which works for some of their projects, but A24 also has a desire to play with the big dogs (they have publicly made this clear), so they will need to do more than that when they have a performer on the level of Johnson leading one of their films. Per Deadline, their digital and social media approach did attract a younger audience to the movie because those marketing means appeal to that demo (64 percent of the opening audience was 18-34), but moviegoers over the age of 35 didn’t really show up. This is a demo that responds more to traditional means of promotion, particularly with TV spots during some of their programming, but that seemed to be missing from the marketing, at least on a larger scale.

Likely realizing that reviews for the movie were beginning to slip, A24 began to throw spots on during sports programming, but much of it arrived too late in the game. TV spots were prevalent during NFL and college football, while viewers watching the MLB playoffs also received a look at the film, but many of the sports arrived within a week or so of the movie’s release. If A24 believed that reviews for Johnson’s performance alone would be enough to boost interest, they were wrong.

The fact of the matter is, studios should never rely on one aspect of a movie to ensure a solid box office performance. There should be an effort to generate buzz across all demos because many of them are hungry for the right reason to hit up their local movie theater. Given how viewing habits have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic and streaming has made audiences more inclined to stay home to watch certain material, they need marketing that speaks to them and makes them want to take the time and money to be there on opening weekend.

Then there was the Taylor Swift of it all. Two weeks before The Smashing Machine opened, Swift announced that she would be releasing Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl exclusively to AMC Theaters. The epically successful singer and businesswoman saw a huge windfall in 2023 when she released Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, also exclusively to AMC, to a staggering $93 million opening weekend on its way to $261.6 million worldwide by the end of its run. Proving the power that she possesses in just about any market, the last-minute announcement of The Official Release Party, which was positioned to play only one weekend, immediately snatched up The Smashing Machine’s premium-priced large format screens.

Even though Swift’s project would only be playing at AMC, that’s still a huge blow because it’s the biggest theater chain in North America. The fact that A24 spent $50 million on The Smashing Machine (with some of that being helped by an estimated $35 million in foreign sales), Swift was able to take her Showgirl release to a $33 million domestic opening ($46 million worldwide) without trailers or a big marketing push. Swift herself was the marketing push, and she, no doubt, even though the audience might not align with that of The Smashing Machine, took a little bit of its fortunes away.

So, where does this leave The Smashing Machine now? The movie received a B- CinemaScore from opening day audiences, which isn’t a great score for a film of this nature. It suggests that word of mouth may not be there and that its box office life will be relatively short. Deadline is reporting that, given its budget plus the $15 million spent on marketing, The Smashing Machine might see a $14-20 million loss for A24. Much of its potential loss will be determined by how much the studio wants to spend on its awards season campaign. All hope seems lost for the movie itself to receive a plethora of nominations, but Johnson is not out of the conversation, even if some will point to the film’s box office as an early indication of his Oscar chances being over.

There seems to be a lot of weight behind Johnson as a contender, and A24 will likely want to stand behind him. They missed a similar opportunity with Zac Efron and The Iron Claw, a movie that received stellar reviews, decent box office ($35 million domestic), and Oscar buzz for Efron that the studio didn’t put their muscle behind. The hope is that they learned from that mistake and that they will concoct an awards season campaign centered around Johnson that shines a light on his career-best performance.

Johnson has been a believer in this project from the jump, and it’s very clear once one realizes the moves he made to make the movie happen. This is an actor who commands $20 million or more per film, and he took a sizable pay cut (reportedly down to just $4 million), and he even gave some of that paycheck to his co-star Emily Blunt, ensuring that he’d have someone he trusts at his side as he went through such a huge professional transformation.

Even though the masses didn’t show up for The Smashing Machine, Johnson still deserves to be celebrated for his efforts, and A24 should stand by his Oscar chances, even in the wake of an opening that was on the much lower end of projects. To his credit, Johnson acknowledged the film’s box office performance in a very classy manner and kept the focus on what doing the film did for him personally and professionally:

“From deep in my grateful bones, thank you to everyone who has watched The Smashing Machine. In our storytelling world, you can’t control box office results — but what I realized you can control is your performance, and your commitment to completely disappear and go elsewhere. And I will always run to that opportunity. It was an honor to transform in this role for my director Benny Safdie. Thank you brother for believing in me. Truth is this film has changed my life.”

This is what should be focused on in the end, rather than The Smashing Machine’s box office performance. This isn’t a sign that audiences don’t want to see Johnson go serious. This isn’t a sign that he should give up on it. Sometimes, many things need to come together for a movie to be a success, and even someone as popular as Johnson is, as a one-man marketing machine, needs an assist to make all the stars align for a true box office hit.

The Smashing Machine is now playing in theaters nationwide.

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