Box Office: 'Argylle' Earns $1.7 Million Thursday

The lack of theatrical releases has forced the industry to be "grateful" for even a mega-budget, poorly-concieved streaming "mockbuster."

After two weeks of essentially no major releases (all due respect to Origin and I.S.S.), theaters have something approximating a “big” Hollywood blockbuster. The irony is that it’s an Apple-produced, $200 million action comedy that, like many a would-be streaming biggie, merely approximates the kind of film that used to be a theatrical A-level events.

Still, as we've seen with Anyone But You over the last month, moviegoers can be so starved for water that they’ll drink the sand. And the relative paucity of theatrical releases over the 2024 calendar year has essentially turned all of them, from cynical long-gestating sequels like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to, well, a mega-budget streaming mockbusters like Argylle, into proverbial underdogs.

Oh, how I yearn for the day when I can again cheer when terrible films bomb and roll my eyes when they succeed. I mean, I tried not to do that even in theatrically healthier times, but I liked having the option of pointing and laughing when an ill-concieved, stunningly bad tentpole like Exodous: Gods and Kingdoms landed with a thud. By the way, has there ever been a tentpole director as profilic as Ridley Scott to the point where the world half-forgets about films as glorious as The Martian *and* movies as miserable as Robin Hood?

Anyway, Apple Original Films and MARV’s Argylle earned $1.7 million in Thursday previews, which began yesterday at 5:00 pm. Just running the raw math, that points to an opening weekend between $14 million and $19 million. That would be objectively miserable for a $200 million would-be franchise-starter, but I’m guessing you can find $200 million in any couch cushion at the Apple headquarters.

We’ve been grading these Apple and Amazon theatricals on a huge curve, since A) they were only getting theatrical releases as a promotion for their streaming launch and B) they represented the kind of films — Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon or Ben Affleck’s Air — that probably couldn’t be justified on an A-level budget if it was an “expected to make money in theaters” release. That they were varying degrees of “very good” didn’t hurt.

However, Argylle, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell and Henry Cavill, is exactly the kind of film that could still get made at the theatrical level, albeit at a $75 million budget where most of the money was spent on the production. It’s closer in spirit to Ghosted or Red Notice, with the insane budget mostly due to everyone getting paid upfront and a certain lack of artistic accountability since A) there’s no reward for strong theatrical performance and B) streamers seem to be fine with trading quality for convenience.

If I’m hard on this film, which to be fair is better than the very worst streaming-intended tentpoles of this nature (my kids want to see it and it’s not so bad that I’ve dissuaded their mother from taking them), it’s because it’s bad for a lot of the reasons (like a sanded-down lack of topicality and specificity in an attempt to appeal to every global marketplace) why streaming-specific releases tend to underwhelm and play like fake movies that you’d see in a Hollywood-set movie or show like Tropic Thunder or 30 Rock.

I still think Kick Ass was a thoughtful and intelligent ahead-of-its-time look at geek fandom going mainstream. I’ll still say, give or take my mood, that X-Men: First Class is the best X-Men movie (X2 is right there). Kingsman: The Secret Service is one of the better 007 riffs this side of If Looks Could Kill and the first Austin Powers. I know Matthew Vaughn is capable of better, more distinctive (and politically angry) picutres. Anyway, that’s enough rambling about a Thursday box office figure that offers few real clues to its weekend fate. Lord knows theaters need all the help they can get.