'Argylle' Flops as Willy Wonka and Jason Statham Notch Box Office Milestones

Streaming releases can't save theaters if they aren't crowdpleasing or commercially successful *for* theaters

Argylle was tops in its debut weekend, earning $18 million (including $6.5 million on Friday) in North America. Even with poor reviews (a 37% rotten and 5/10 average critic rating from Rotten Tomatoes) and a C+ from Cinemascore, the Matthew Vaughn-directed and Jason Fuchs-penned action comedy pulled a surprisingly decent 2.76x weekend multiplier. Nonetheless, it’s still a $200 million flick (at least that’s what Apple paid to produce the film when it was in development) that earned lousy reviews, poor audience reception and $35 million worldwide. Universal is strictly the distributor here, as was Sony for Napoleon and Paramount for Killers of the Flower Moon. The Apple project is yet another example of streamers making the same mistakes as the studios and yet more evidence that streaming-centric companies are not automatically better at creating new franchises or adapting existing IPs.