News culture Clint Eastwood's Juror No. 2 is destined to be a box office failure… Warner takes a huge risk on one of the best thrillers of 2024
Published on 06/11/2024 at 7:45 p.m.
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Clint Eastwood's latest work released on October 30 deals with a legal case. While the film got off to an excellent start in France, it nevertheless experienced a very particular fate in the United States… It's difficult to understand the strategy of Warner, the production company.
Still standing, still awesome
Juror #2 is the 40th film directed by Clint Eastwood, who is 94 years old. The man, recently weakened by the death of his partner last July, did not attend the premiere of his feature film during the American Film Institute Festival (Los Angeles) at the end of October. Released last Wednesday, Juror #2 has a press score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. The budget would rise, depending on Widescreenat around $33 million. The plot follows the moods of Justin Kemp, played by Nicholas Hoult (Skins, X-Men), a young man invited to serve as a jury for a murder case. When the facts are presented to him, the main character begins to doubt: what if he was the guilty one?
A sneaky broadcast in the United States
It would have seemed obvious that one of Clint Eastwood's latest films would benefit from wide distribution, especially on American soil. This is not the case: only around fifty American cinemas broadcast Juror #2. In comparison Joker: Folie à Deux was visible in more than 4,000 cinemas nationwide. According to Variety, Warner “currently has no plans to expand to other locations in the coming weeks.” A common restriction for independent films, but rather rare for productions made by a big Hollywood name. A strategy which will certainly not contribute to strengthening the number of entries.
This is a very intriguing situation when we know that the work benefits from a projection in approximately 300 rooms in England and more than 400 in France. This discreet release in North America would reflect a Warner strategy which consists of releasing the film in a limited number of theaters and relying on word of mouth to then increase the number of copies distributed and hope for an Oscar nomination. For the moment, the start of Juror #2 is above all a success in France, where it grossed $3.1 million at the box office. In comparison, Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom had raised $4.6 million. However, Warner had spoken out ahead of the release, expressing that it did not want to communicate on the film's revenue.
The most likely scenario is that Juror #2 arrive very soon on a streaming platform in the United Stateswhere the media chronology is much less restrictive than in France.
France
