Disney's 'West Side Story' Hits Sour Note With Puny $10.5M Opening Weekend

There was good news and bad news for the Walt Disney Co.’s DIS weekend release of Steven Spielberg’s reimagining of the classic musical “West Side Story.” The good news: the film premiered as the top-grossing title at the U.S. weekend box office. The bad news: the $10.5 million take from 2,820 screens marks one of the worst financial performances for a weekend box office champ since the nation’s theaters reopened earlier this year.

What Happened: The $100 million “West Side Story” from Disney's 20th Century Studios arrived in theaters with an extensive marketing campaign and an uncommonly strong wave of positive reviews. But nonetheless, “West Side Story” barely eked out the top-grossing ranking from another Disney title, the animated feature “Encanto,” which grossed $9.42 million in its third week in theatrical release.

And it is unlikely “West Side Story” will maintain its fragile hold as the top box office attraction over the coming weekend when Sony Pictures’ SONY “Spider-Man: No Way Home” arrives in theaters.

“West Side Story’ was not the only new film to create disappointment this weekend. The box office results of the other two major new releases arriving in theaters – Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up” NFLX and Amazon.com’s AMZN “Becoming the Ricardos” – are unknown because neither releasing company published the ticket sales for their respective films.

However, a Deadline report estimated “Don’t Look Up” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence grossed $700,000 from a 500-theater release while “Becoming the Ricardos” starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem absorbed $400,000 from a 400-venue release – both returns are rather flaccid considering the star power and marketing push they received.

What Happens Next: In addition to “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the coming weekend’s other big national release comes via Disney’s Searchlight Pictures with Guillermo del Toro’s version of the noir thriller “Nightmare Alley” starring Bradley Cooper in the role of an unscrupulous carny that was immortalized by Tyrone Power in the 1947 classic.

Among the prominent films in limited release are “The Tender Bar,” a Netflix drama directed by George Clooney and starring Ben Affleck; the science-fiction film “Swan Song” starring two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali from Apple Inc. AAPL, which will also offer a simultaneous streaming release on Apple TV+; and another science-fiction film, Bleecker Street Media’s “Last Words,” starring Nick Nolte and Charlotte Rampling.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has two features coming out this week: a Dec. 15 opening for the biopic “Minamata” starring Johnny Depp as Eugene Smith, the photojournalist who exposed the tragic effects of corporate polluting on Japanese waterways in the early 1970s, and a Dec. 17 debut for Danish director Charlotte Siegling’s historical epic “Margrete – Queen of the North.”

Also Worth Noting: If you’re seeking to show off your cred as a movie trivia expert, here is a question that will stump many people: what was the first Christmas film ever made?

The answer is the 1898 film “Santa Claus,” a British production directed by George Albert Smith. “Santa Claus” is also unique in offering one of the first examples of split-screen filmmaking, with parallel actions achieved via double exposures.

This very rare film still survives, and the British Film Institute has made “Santa Claus” available on YouTube: