While Warner Bros. has been cutthroat with its decisions, it’s being reported that they will already be sending Mickey 17 to digital just after 18 days.
Warner Bros. has shown to be pretty cutthroat in the past with underperforming films. Last year, Kevin Costner’s passion project Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 would finally hit screens and the Western epic, which sported a price tag of $100 million, was dumped on digital a mere three weeks after it premiered in theaters and the box office earnings for Costner and company would come in at just above $30 million. At the time, the unconventionally short release window was also thought to additionally be a strategy to get audiences interested in an already planned follow-up that was to be released a couple of months later. However, Warner Bros. completely scrapped the second chapter from their release schedule entirely at this point.
Enter Mickey 17 — a quirky sci-fi starring Robert Pattinson (who is currently the face of Batman for the studio) and comes from Bong Joon Ho, director of the Academy Award-winning film Parasite. Mickey 17 sported a budget of $118 million and was said to need around $275 million to $300 million worldwide to get in the black while making its theatrical run. The futuristic clone comedy would only gross about $19 million in its first week, and in the second week, business dropped 60% with the competition of Novocaine. Now, according to World of Reel, Warner Bros. may already be putting Mickey 17 on digital next week on March 25, which is only 18 days after release.
World of Reel and many outlets report this news as it broke on What to Stream, which came from their sources. Warner Bros. has yet to formally announce a digital release. However, it is being reported that Mickey 17 could cause a $100 million loss for the studio and the David Zaslav regime would not surprise anyone if they were to make a move like this.
Our own Chris Bumbray enjoyed the film, even if he found that a chunk of it didn’t work for him. He would say in his review, “Indeed, Mickey 17 is all over the place in terms of quality. It’s one of the few recent films where I went back and forth between thinking it was a disaster and a masterpiece over and over again – sometimes in the same scene, depending on who was being showcased. Some of it is grating – some of it is superb. It doesn’t really work as a whole, but you know what? I’m glad it exists.”
