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Dec 27, 2023

Killers Of The Flower Moon Could Mark The Return Of Blockbuster Adult Dramas At The Movies

Both are auteur-driven dramas starring Leonardo Dicaprio. It's not a bad recipe

Both are auteur-driven dramas starring Leonardo Dicaprio. It's not a bad recipe for success.

The first trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon dropped yesterday and it looks incredible. For years, all we've had of the movie was one production still of stars Leonardo Dicaprio and Lily Gladstone sitting at a table, so finally getting a longer look at the film is really exciting. This is Martin Scorsese's first movie since The Irishman and I also suspect it could be the first adult drama to really break through at the box office since the year of that film's release.

Though movies have rebounded in many ways in the past year, the halcyon days of 2019 seem impossibly far away in others. That year gave us several blockbuster hits that weren't franchise movies. Globally, Little Women made $218.9 million, Ford v Ferrari grossed $225.5 million, Hustlers hustled $157.6 million, Parasite took in $263.1 million, and Knives Out slashed its way to $311.9 million. Standing above them all was Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Quentin Tarrantino's alternative history of the Manson murders which rode its director's name recognition and a star-studded cast to $374.6 million. Killers of the Flower Moon is a different, less obviously entertaining beast, but I think it has the chance to get adult moviegoers back to theaters in a way that nothing yet has post-Covid.

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That's because Killers of the Flower Moon shares two crucial things with Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. For one, it's the long-anticipated next movie from a beloved Hollywood auteur with a history of strong box office performance. Not every Scorsese movie is a hit, but in the 21st century alone, he's scored at the box office with The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, and The Wolf of Wall Street. Which brings us to the second thing that Killers of the Flower Moon has in common with OUATIH — and with all of Scorsese's blockbusters of the last 20 years — the presence of Leonardo Dicaprio, the biggest American movie star that isn't Tom Cruise.

It can be easy to forget how massive a box office draw Leo is because the man just doesn't do that many movies. You remember The Revenant? The movie that won him the Oscar back in 2015? I saw it when I was 21 and still in college, and now I'm 29 and have been out of college for seven years. Killers of the Flower Moon is only his third movie since then (OUATIH, Don't Look Up). Dicaprio's presence made a movie about a guy trying to survive in the wilderness for nearly three hours into a massive ($533 million) hit. If anyone is going to bring the adult drama back, it's him.

Of course, Killers of the Flower Moon is going to have to clear a pretty high threshold to be a hit. It cost $200 million dollars to make, so it will need to bring in at least $400 million to begin turning a profit. That's a lot of money, and only superheroes and sequels have made that much since the pandemic began.

On the other hand, Killers of the Flower Moon didn't primarily get greenlit to turn a profit. Apple is putting it in theaters, but that's a rare move for a streamer and is likely driven more by Scorsese and Dicaprio pushing for a theatrical release than Apple's own interest. Instead, like The Irishman, it's more likely that Killers of the Flower Moon is Apple's attempt to purchase prestige and awards recognition by writing the most acclaimed living American filmmaker a massive check.

So, it doesn't actually need to be a massive box office hit to accomplish the goals that Apple likely has for it. Still, I don't think you can necessarily write it off. Older audiences have been returning to theaters slowly and movies like Book Club: The Next Chapter and 80 for Brady haven't connected nearly as much as their pre-Covid counterparts, but there are signs of life. A Man Called Otto made $112.6 million almost entirely on the strength of Tom Hanks' status as a box office draw among older audiences, and the success of The Whale further shows that there's an audience for star-driven dramas. Moviegoers as a whole got their return to theaters moment with Top Gun: Maverick, so I wouldn't rule out Killers of the Flower Moon as the movie that could bring audiences back for dramas.

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Andrew King is a Features Editor at TheGamer. He has been working as a journalist since 2016 and is a museum caretaker in his spare time. He loves immersive sims, RPGS, and David Lynch movies.