Brad Pitt as the great silent film heartthrob, Margot Robbie as a wild, up-and-coming starlet, sex orgies with naked people, dead people and circus elephants, film set disasters and an ode to Hollywood in the 1920s – Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” was to become the spectacular Oscar epic of the turn of the year. The German subtitle promises nothing less than the “intoxication of ecstasy”.
Studio Paramount believed in the $80 million extra-long film (running more than three hours) and brought it to more than 3,300 screens across the US over the Christmas holiday. The audience, however, didn’t want to hear about it – with box office earnings of just 4.85 million US dollars, “Babylon” is one of the biggest Hollywood flops in a long time.
While an extreme snowstorm swept across much of the country, keeping potential moviegoers from leaving their homes, such a disastrous start can only have deeper causes. Reviews were poor, a mere 55 percent average on rottentomatoes.com, and viewers gave the film even more negative ratings, such as a C- on the Cinema Score post-screening survey.
In order to break even, the film would have to bring in 250 million dollars worldwide, which now seems hopeless. The five Golden Globe nominations the film already has, including Best Film Musical or Comedy, and Damien Chazelle’s Oscar-winning status for directing La La Land don’t help either. Whether the film will have a better fate in Germany will be seen when it starts on January 19th.