At a time when the box office is rebounding and embracing auteur-driven fare (i.e., Christopher Nolan’s near $1.8B-grossing The Odyssey) as well as originality (a three-hour documentary about a delusional, scandalous tech titan called You Can See Everything), the star-studded Jenna Ortega– and Amy Adams-starring Klara and the Sun failed to shine with a $701K domestic opening last weekend. Booked at 880 locations, the movie posted a per-theater average that was less than $800.
The Sony theatrical release, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 Booker Prize-longlisted novel, comes from absurdist auteur Taika Waitit. Ater glamming, joking and grossing up Marvel’s mightiest Avenger with Thor: Ragnarok in 2017 (the superhero’s top earner with $855.3M WW), he went on to win an Adapted Screenplay Oscar for the politically offbeat Hitler-adjacent comedy Jojo Rabbit in 2019. A niche New Zealand filmmaker known for his witty humor and heart, Waititi received the phone call to come work at Marvel following the 2016 Sundance world premiere of his movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Waititi also delivered the second-highest-grossing Thor movie in Thor: Love and Thunder in 2022 ($760M).
Director Taika Waititi and Jenna Ortega on the ‘Klara and the Sun’ set
Sony Pictures Releasing/Everett Collection
Last Monday, we walked into an AMC Century City press screening for Klara and the Sun with a tremendous amount of bias: We’d heard that the movie sat around for two years with Sony befuddled as to how to release it. We heard rumors about the studio being at odds with Waititi’s “free jazz” and “instinctual” auteur stylings on set (those are adjectives used by rival studio executives who adore and have worked with Waititi). Then there were the bloody reviews out of the London Film Festival (The Guardian called Klara and the Sun “a sentimental mess”).
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I cried three times during the movie in which Ortega stars as the title character, a later-edition robot. After wallowing unbought with her fellow robots in a gloomy city storefront, Klara is finally purchased by a sickly young girl, Josie (Mia Tharia), and her dominant mother, Chrissy (Amy Adams). The plan is for Klara to bring joy to Josie while looking out for her safety. They live in a bright, sunny country home surrounded by golden wheat, where Klara finds her footing in the real world; she is continually energized, bedazzled and worshipping the sun. Along the way, Chrissy comes to blows with Klara, but then learns the robot is the best thing in her daughter’s life. There’s also a bit of a twist in this emotional dystopian feature about how precious life can be.
How did a movie led by famous YA star Ortega (39M followers on social) and directed by an Oscar-winning filmmaker lose its way at a booming box office?
‘Jojo Rabbit’
Fox Searchlight
The industry continually calls for more movies aimed at women. Here was one.
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And how ironic: When Searchlight first rolled out Jojo Rabbit, there was concern over Waititi starring as Adolf Hitler in the movie and befriending a young boy. A TIFF world premiere paved the way for the movie’s Oscar run, winning the festival’s awards-bellwether prize, the Grolsch People’s Choice Award, and goose-stepping to 81% certified fresh with critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 94% with audiences. Audiences ultimately realized with Jojo Rabbit that the movie wasn’t an affront and that it had something smart to say in divided political times. The final global box office was $93M.
We’ve seen pre-finance package documents on Klara and the Sun that showed a direct cost for the pic of $44.3M with a $4.4M contingency and anticipated New Zealand subsidies of $7.55M. Sony insiders swear the movie cost a net high $20M before global P&A spend. At either budget point, Klara and the Sun was economically priced for an audacious movie, with Spyglass and TSG covering 50% of the budget. The losses here on Klara and the Sun ultimately are minimal next to the $150M-plus that’s out there on the $160M net-priced Tom Cruise-starring Digger, which Alejandro G. Iñárritu directed. Likewise, Sony minimized its exposure on the $30M- to $42M-costing Aaron Sorkin-directed Mark Zuckerberg follow-up, The Social Reckoning, which was 50% co-funded by Alcon. We hear that movie, which grossed around $17M WW to date, will lose the Culver City studio in the single-digit millions after all ancillaries.
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The book Klara and the Sun was championed by Sony-based 3000 Pictures producer Elizabeth Gabler back in 2023. Waititi would discover the novel in an airport bookstore and was wowed. That was serendipitous, as his moving sense of whimsy was the right fit for the book. (Or was it?) The novel was quite melancholic and subtle; Ishiguro’s tomes are challenging to adapt (i.e., his dystopian novel Never Let Me Go didn’t translate at the B.O., grossing $2.4M domestic and less than $10M WW). We’re told that Ishiguro even encouraged and supported Waititi throughout to make his own version of Klara and the Sun.
When there’s a box office misfire, the media quite often likes to uncover some sort of major mishap on set. Truth be told, Waititi turned the film in under his allotted shoot time and under budget. The pic began lensing in February 2024 at Silverlight Studios in Wānaka, NZ, and continued in Auckland, wrapping April of that year.
The original ending of the movie described by one source close to the testing was “a bummer” and more faithful to the book’s ending. Waititi worked with Gabler in reshoots (which occurred in April 2025 with Ortega) to get the ending to a significantly more positive place. We’ve heard myriad reports about the pic’s testing, that the movie with the original ending came in at an 83% positive and, with the revised upbeat ending, went up to 87% positive. Other sources in the know tell us that the test scores were “just fine” and that audiences didn’t buy into the tonality nor did they connect with the characters.
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The minus of Klara and the Sun, per marketing sources, is that it’s not a widely read book. Thus, there wasn’t a massive appeal for the IP. On the plus side, that provided more liberties for Waititi and Dahvi Waller in adapting.
Some have told us that Klara and the Sun sat around for two years with Sony up in arms about how they wanted to release it. Studio insiders counter that Klara and the Sun only sat around for a year. There was a discussion at one point to send it to Cannes back in May. However, Ortega’s production commitment on Season 3 of Netflix’s Wednesday was busy, lasting from late February through September 30. We hear the actress — along with Waititi — were involved with marketing; Ortega suggested the light blue color background in the one-sheet.
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The movie finally was dated for October 23 as wide in Rentrak back in mid-April. Early tracking wasn’t promising: It landed in the low single digits when the film hit six weeks out before its release.
After Wednesday wrapped, Ortega became fully available to promote the film, traveling with Waititi and Adams to the London Film Festival, Rome Film Festival and a New York premiere. Ortega, Adams and Waititi also did The Drew Barrymore Show, where the host championed the movie.
Ortega appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, as well as the Today show, alongside Adams. Ortega also posted about the film and her red carpet appearances in London and Rome on her IG.
But then the reviews hit out of London on October 15 like a swat of hand ninjas out of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, slicing down Klara and the Sun for its sentimentality. It has a current Rotten Tomatoes critical score of 25%. “Klara and the Sun Is Waste for Jenna Ortega” was Vulture’s headline, while other critics slammed it as “emotionally manipulative” and “meandering.” The whole situation was reminiscent of the 2016 Will Smith weeper Collateral Beauty, which, after getting pummeled by critics at 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, had an ugly cry at the box office with a $7.1M domestic opening and $31M final.
Seeing the reviews, Sony waved the white flag, reducing Klara and the Sun’s theatrical release from wide to moderate on Rentrak. With such retreats come organic marketing budget cuts, and this one was significantly less than $30M worldwide. Given its sophisticated patina, Klara and the Sun is a movie that lives and dies by reviews in regard to finding an audience. It’s not a popcorn movie like Street Fighter, which overcame bad reviews (41%) and still opened at the box office ($31M).
We heard audiences hit the exits over the weekend, further supporting the concerns that were raised by testing on Klara and the Sun. It came in at a 69% positive score and 48% definite recommend (not very good), with women over 25 showing up at 33% but not in bulk, with 19% under 25.
“The Jenna Ortega fans were not seeing this as their movie. They might have expected one thing but didn’t get it,” says one source with knowledge of the pic’s pulse. An RT audience score went missing throughout the weekend before appearing Monday at 78%, worlds above the critical rating.
While A24 has been able to capture the Gen Z audience in the noir stylings of You Can See Everything, a movie whose box office success has been propelled by several fan memes parodying Elizabeth Holmes and doc interviewer/co-director Nathan Fielder, another marketing source observes that Klara and the Sun’s misfire at the B.O. with that demo stems from not being FUBU (“for us, by us”). That was the secret of success for A24’s highest-grossing movie this year, Backrooms, which finaled with $400.6M WW.
At a time when the box office is winning against streaming, the sad takeaway here with Klara and the Sun is that no matter how much TLC a studio provides a production to get it in its best possible shape, even with decent- to above-average test scores, the pack nature of critics continues to have the power to thwart the best of commercial cinematic intentions.
Klara and the Sun is one of many examples in a flourishing box office of just how fickle the theatrical marketplace can be.