From Pop Icon to Box Office Flop: Why Robbie Williams’ Biopic Better Man Failed to Hit the Mark.
The trend is clear: if you’ve got a successful career in music, a film about your life is probably already in the works. In the overwhelming flood of music biopics, creativity has become essential to stand out – like the recently released LEGO-animated Pharrell Williams biopic.
So, when the director of hits like The Greatest Showman and Rocketman tackles the wild life of one of the UK’s biggest pop stars, complete with a bold CGI twist, success seems like a sure thing, right? Unfortunately, not. Here’s everything you need to know about Better Man, one of the biggest box office flops in recent memory.
From Hype to Box Office Bust
When Robbie Williams confided in director Michael Gracey that he often felt "less evolved" than others, as if being dragged onto a stage like a monkey, the concept for Better Man was born: a CGI monkey portraying Williams in the biopic. Upon its recent worldwide release, the film surprisingly garnered positive reviews, achieving an impressive 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It even managed to gross $10 million at the global box office. The only problem? The movie came with a staggering $110 million production price tag.
The movie first hit select US theaters on Christmas of 2024, followed by a soon-to-come worldwide release.
First trailer for the Robbie Williams biopic 'BETTER MAN', starring a CGI monkey as Robbie Williams.In theaters on January 17. pic.twitter.com/s1rFAL9hpW
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 2, 2024
Set Up for Failure
Since the USA and Canada make up the largest cinema market, contributing the most to global box office revenue, you definitely don’t want to miss out on that slice of the pie. Here are two possible reasons why the movie underperformed, with a box office gross of only about 1 million dollars in that market.
First, Robbie Williams may be a phenomenon in Europe, but he is practically unknown in the US. In fact, months before its release, US audiences had already predicted on the internet that Better Man would struggle in the North American market. Second, with depictions of drug use and nudity, the movie received an R rating, further narrowing its target audience in the U.S.
Paramount can only take comfort in the fact that the movie, for which they acquired the rights for 25 million dollars, has greatly benefited the Australian state of Victoria, where the biopic was filmed. The film has created over 3,000 jobs and generated 142 million dollars in direct expenditure for Victoria.
What do you think of the biopic? What animal would you pick for yours? Let us know in the comments!