A24's The Death of Robin Hood Opened to $2.6 Million. The Reviews Weren't the Problem.

A24 opened a Hugh Jackman movie wide this weekend and almost nobody showed up. "The Death of Robin Hood" took in $2.6 million across 1,762 theaters and landed ninth. Critics mostly liked it. Audiences mostly skipped it. That gap is the whole story.

For Jackman, the number stings in a particular way. This is his lowest wide-release opening in about five years. The only recent debut that came in lower was 2021's "Reminiscence," which managed $1.9 million and at least had the excuse of dropping day-and-date on a streaming service during the back half of a pandemic. "The Death of Robin Hood" had a normal theatrical run, summer real estate, and a star who opened "The Sheep Detectives" to $15.1 million earlier this year. It still flatlined.

The reviews were not the problem

This is the frustrating part if you care about movies getting made. The film is not a turkey. It sits around 70 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics calling it a slow, somber, genuinely grim take on a legend that usually gets the merry-men treatment. The performances drew the loudest praise. IndieWire's David Ehrlich wrote that Jackman's eyes "burn with the inextinguishable charm of a great showman." Deadline's Pete Hammond was effusive. Jodie Comer and Bill Skarsgård got their own bouquets.

What it did not get was an audience that agreed. CinemaScore exit polls handed it a C+, and the Rotten Tomatoes audience score parked in the mid-60s. That spread, warm reviews and a cool crowd, usually means a movie is doing something on purpose that regular ticket buyers did not sign up for. Here it is the tone. Director Michael Sarnoski made "Pig" and "A Quiet Place: Day One," and he is not a man who does crowd-pleasing. He took Robin Hood, a character people associate with tights and archery jokes, and made a violent, dying-man's redemption story that runs a little over two hours. Some critics flagged it as too bleak and too slow even while admiring the craft. You can respect that choice and still understand why a Friday-night crowd bounced off it.

The counterprogramming math did not work

A24 dropped this into the same weekend Pixar's "Toy Story 5" opened to $160 million, the biggest debut of the year. The idea behind counterprogramming is sound: when a family juggernaut eats every screen, you go grab the adults who want nothing to do with talking toys. R-rated, prestige-adjacent, an aging movie star, fine. The execution is where it fell apart.

The title is a quiet problem. "The Death of Robin Hood" tells you the ending and promises a downer, which is honest and also not a thing you put on a marquee when you need walk-up business. The marketing never settled on what kind of movie this was. And asking a general audience to choose a somber two-hour meditation on mortality over the safest brand in animation was always going to be a hard sell, no matter how good the reviews read.

Does the money even matter

Maybe less than the headline suggests. Reported figures put the production budget around $20 million, and A24 is said to have paid roughly $4 million for domestic rights, which means the company's exposure here is smaller than a $2.6 million opening makes it look. A24 has built its whole identity on movies that find their value later, on streaming, on disc, in the long tail of people who trust the logo. Estimates floating around peg the break-even somewhere near $45 million worldwide. A theatrical run that opens like this is not getting there on tickets.

So file this one under a familiar 2026 pattern: a well-made, well-reviewed movie for grown-ups that the theatrical market could not be bothered to support. Sarnoski will be fine. Jackman will be fine. The worrying part is what a string of weekends like this tells every studio about whether the somber adult drama is worth a wide release at all. The reviews said yes. The box office, as it keeps doing, said don't bother.