David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is turning into a massive box-office bomb
Despite high initial projections for Amsterdam, the David O. Russell caper stands to lose nearly $100 million
Aux News Amsterdam
Well, every prestige ensemble picture can’t be a home run. The latest victim of astronomical hype: David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, which appears to be morphing from a star-studded 1930s caper with awards-season buzz to a box-office bomb. Deadline reports that between a projected global gross of $35 million, $70 million in estimated global P&A, and all other home ancillaries, Amsterdam could lose $97 million.
Per Deadline, although rivals had once believed Amsterdam could bring home $12-$15 million in its opening, the real numbers paled in comparison. The film debuted with a $6.5M opening in 3,005 theaters, and altogether did a $10M worldwide start. Despite the star power of Margot Robbie, Christian Bale, John David Washington, Taylor Swift, and more, Amsterdam just couldn’t find the legs of Russell’s Oscar-nominated 2013 ensemble American Hustle.
The American Hustle comparison looks even starker when it comes to budgets: Amsterdam reportedly cost twice as much as American Hustle to make. Some of the hefty costs stemmed from (say it with us) the pandemic, which halted production in March 2020. The shoot had originally been planned for Boston, but amidst the uncertainty of COVID-19 most of the actors chose not to travel, so filming was moved to Los Angeles. All in all, even with a $2.5 million California tax credit, the location shift (not to mention the highly stylized period-piece setting) bumped costs from $50 million to $80 million.
A rocky run at the box office hasn’t been the only thing deflating Amsterdam’s balloons. Critics haven’t exactly lauded the film, and it now holds a 34% on Rotten Tomatoes. The A.V. Club’s Jordan Hoffman, in his review of the film, writes that Amsterdam “zooms along unexpected narrative curves with a tremendous self-confidence it mistakes for grace. In actuality, it’s more of a shamble, like a sloppy guy at a bar telling a farfetched tale signifying not-too-much.” What signifies confidence better than a dramatic, glittery box-office flop that involves Taylor Swift getting thrown into traffic?
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David O.’s gonna be mad!
Someone make sure Lily Tomlin’s okay!
Which female comedy legend will he call a “cunt” this time? Carol Burnett? Stay tuned, David’s BIG MAD!
You’d think the “wants to see Taylor Swift thrown into traffic” audience alone would bring in some big numbers.Not me, though. I love T-Swiz.
Taylor Swift is in this? I have seen multiple commercials and I didn’t even know that.
Are there that many people hostile towards Swift? This wasn’t Tom Cruise dying 30 times onscreen in Edge of Tomorrow. With Swift the spectrum seems to run from indifference to love.
I haven’t heard much Taylor-hate in a while, but all pop stars have their haters, even if it’s 15-year-old edgelords acting like they’re the first ones to ever hear Led Zeppelin or AC/DC.
david o russell is what’s known in the industry as a ‘hack fraud’
Well, Amsterdam’s advertising campaign certainly hasn’t done it any favors. All of the commercials I see are basically lightning fast cuts as they flash a zillion actors’ names across the screen. You walk away with no idea what the film is about. The trailer isn’t much better. I actually heard the trailer before I saw it because I was working in my kitchen. It sounds bad. The dialogue sounds bad. The accents sound bad. Maybe this will finally be the film that makes it OK for critics to stop fawning over David O. Russell. American Hustle was sloppy and near incoherent. Silver Linings Playbook was better but has had a pretty short critical shelf life.
I really hated American Hustle.
Same….it smacked of a certain ‘I am up my own ass’ storyline that had some sloppiness. It also seemed to be aimed at critics with some scenery chewing scenes that didn’t need to be included in the story.I will say I did dig Bradley Cooper in it.
It seemed like such a try-hard Scorsese copy. And with “The Wolf of Wall Street” being out at the same time, why would anyone need a wan copy??
Indeed, Wolf was such the superior product. Indeed, I even think it was some of Scorsese’s better stuff in a long while and it really demonstrated how well Scorsese understands editing and story in comparison to Hustle.David O seems to get off on his greatness while Scorsese shows mastery on what counts when you set them side by side. And its not for lack of star power either….I just think Scorsese really harnesses greatness and magnifies it. Shit, he practically made Ray Liotta an icon against DeNiro and Pesci in GoodFellas as well as Sharon Stone in Casino. And holy shit, DiCaprio was already great in Wolf but Margot Robbie and Jonah Hill then….Amazing performances! That’s what I love about him is that yes he has some real big talent already but then brings out someone else to really shine…Always worth the ticket.Personally, I would regret Marty retiring a hell of a lot more than David doing so, IMHO.
Absolutely agree. As a matter of fact, you point out how good he is when it comes to casting (not that he doesn’t use someone who is probably a great casting agent) that he gets people he knows he can get a performance out of, even if they haven’t show a particular side previously. Look at Wahlberg in “The Departed” — I honestly don’t think he’s been as good before or after that performance. Stone was never better than ‘Casino’.
Oh Departed…..massive cast and I still can’t believe the effort of Wahlberg. Highly agree, easily one of his best efforts then and now. Dignam was amazing when he was turning the screws on DiCaprio on the intial interview.And whatever the hell they fed Alec Baldwin to make him give that much scene stealing was criminal. “I am going for a smoke, do you want a smoke, you don’t smoke do you, what are you one of those fitness freaks, go fuck yourself!’
I forget what preceded it, but Wahlberg’s “you know…given your nature” is one of my favorite verbal digs and I still think about it fairly regularly.
Have you ever been so happy to see Wahlberg show up as when he appears in the final scene? Fucking awesome.I also love that he wasn’t just a loudmouth meathead and was the one who figured out who was behind Queenan’s (and others) death.
scorcese doesn’t edit his own films so he doesn’t deserve the credit for it
Yes….Thelma Schoonmaker does all the editing….but any editing is a collaborative effort.And considering she is the only one he has allowed to do it and they have maintained that since 1980 with Raging Bull, you do realize he doesn’t just toss the cans at her and sit back, right? It is always the director working with the editor to bring the vision to its finality.
Toss the cans
See my above post.
Scorsese edits his films very much and very actively in tandem with Thelma Schoonmaker, sitting in a chair right next to her the entire time. I’ve actually talked to her about the process (they keep TCM on in the background while they’re doing it, and will sometimes even get inspired by the classic movie they’re glancing at.) If you think Martin Scorsese is handing a pile of raw footage to an editor then walking away, you’re…um. Let’s just say you’re really, really wrong.
Don’t forget Matthew McConaughey either. Scorsese deserves at least some of the credit for rehabilitating his career. He might be the most memorable part of the entire movie.
Yep, the great thing about that is for all intents and purposes, it looks like Marty recognized the special weirdness that McConaughey was bringing to the table and let him run with it over some of the script.Knowing him and the tales of his crazy coked up benders during Taxi Driver, I suspect he was like ‘the dude exemplifies the nuttiness of an absolute coke fiend who manically insightful in one breath and off his gourd in the next’ and just pointed the camera at him. And it was absolute gold….I have spoken with a few old hat 80’s Wall Street types that were in those trenches and they said everyone knew a Mark Hanna. ‘Utterly full of shit but so well meaning and sure of himself, you couldn’t help but like him’
Wolf is Hill’s best work by a mile. I like him a lot in 21 Jump Street and Moneyball, but Scorsese somehow made an actual character out of a cartoon. Some commenter around here said he looked like a character from Far Side: The Movie
Heheh, I see it.Jonah is an interesting beast. I consider him one of the finest performers when it comes to interplay with other characters…he is a master as supporting and bringing the best out of those around him. You mentioned Moneyball and I immediately thought of the back and forth with Brad Pitt. Every scene between them was amazing…..Hill brought out Peter Brant perfectly as a slightly fearful numbers man who has the right ideas but is ostracized for it because it goes against everything that has been taught in baseball. He knows….KNOWS he is right but just can’t have enough gumption to push it until he runs into Billy Beane in a right time/right place.It was elaboration of course…its vastly simplifies the actual ideas of Sidney Ellerson (Beane’s boss) who was selling on base percentages as a measuring tool back in the 80’s and Beane pushed it more in the 90’s with the help of Brant and his vast spreadsheets analysis…..but Jonah made you believe this nebbish guy was the root of the genius totally. He sold the story and made Pitt look awesome.
What’s funny about Moneyball is that Beane’s detractors were actually right, at least about that approach building a champion. A team assembled to win a threshold number of games without any major star power is probably not going to have much success in the postseason when facing A pitching most every game. The Red Sox using both deep statistical analysis AND having a checkbook proved to be the formula. You can identify the winners among the winners.
I like that it gave Rachel Brooks a smartarse line to throw at Wynn Duffy in Justified.
Even the Amy-Adams-looking-hot parts?!?
Amy can do almost no wrong for me, but alas, not even those parts could suffice.
at the time I remember the movie posters that just featured Amy or Jenifer Lawrence in those sexy 70s dresses (this was before the leaked photos of J Law) so it was the most revealing I had seen her at that point, but yeah the movie was meh.
every scene with Amy Adams in it is an Amy-Adams-looking-hot-part
Most years, Oscar bait is what it is, but for some reason, American Hustle getting nominations really drove me crazy. That movie suuuuuucked
I got so bored halfway through American Hustle that I had to walk into the cinema lobby and play with my phone for a few minutes just to make sure that my brain hadn’t actually crashed.
That movie lost me the minute it thought it could pass a 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence as a long-suffering housewife. It felt like when you see a high school production of Guys & Dolls.
Her character added zero to the movie. I know she helped smooth things for Bale with the Mob but otherwise she served no purpose other than making me constantly wonder how old she was supposed to be and what that meant in terms of age at marriage and childbirth.
It was based on a true story so I’m sure they felt like the character needed to be included but the casting choice of a very young woman in the role was incredibly distracting. Their attempts to make her look older just made her seem like a kid in her mom’s clothes.
I liked it a whole lot less than I expected to given the subject matter (caper flicks are my jam), but the Bale / Lawrence relationship made no sense (how old was she when she had their kid, anyway??) and him willingly handing her off to a mobster made even less. The movie would have been better cutting her entirely.
I was going to say, I couldn’t have told you if this was a TV show or a movie. But that isn’t an Amsterdam-specific problem.
This. There was not NEARLY enough pre-release advertising, and then suddenly, too much, and it’s too much of nothing, just names, names, names, which is intriguing but we still need a STORY.
Some of the names aren’t even that intriguing. Of the names that flash on screen in the commercial I remember, a handful could probably have been left out because it’s not like they’re the marquee names people are flocking to see: Andrea Reisborough, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Taylor Swift all come to mind (and yes, I know why Swift is prominently featured, but let’s be real about how likely it is she can actually act) along with Matthias Schoenaerts, Allesandro Nivola, and Mike Meyers. None of these are names that “carry” a movie, and yet they get flashed across the screen in 400 pt font like they’re superstars. Mostly that has just been confusing to me. It’s being advertised like BLOCKBUSTER CAST, when mostly I just feel, “Huh, a big ensemble” when I see the commercial/short teaser.
Very harsh on Anya Taylor-Joy, she’s on her way to being a massive star.
I don’t think it’s a particularly harsh or inaccurate assessment of her current status, though. I agree she’s on the rise, and I like her work very much. But she’s not a mega-star in the same way that Bale or Robbie is. I don’t think that’s an unfair statement. Maybe in 5 years with a few more starring roles under her belt she will be. But right now she’s had a couple of good supporting roles, a few leads in indie movies (both Emma and The Witch made well under $50 million) and a (very good) miniseries. Furiosa in 2024 might push her over into major star territory, but I would say that presently she’s not the kind of star whose top billing pulls people into the theater.
But that’s just it, she wasn’t billed top but she easily big enough to be an “and also these people!” actor, absolutely.
Am I the only one who finds her incredibly annoying and terrible at acting? She ruined Peaky Blinders for me. She is just so awful. Bleh.
I think she’s great, Peaky Blinders’ utter lack of redeeming features is what ruined it for me, but it’s all swings and roundabouts isn’t it?
Actually I think the loss of Aunt Polly was the biggest blow. But I think shows about underdogs fighting to make it are more interesting than shows about people who have made it and are working hard to consolidate and maintain their power so once the story gets to that place it’s harder and harder to keep it interesting.
I think the short window was related to the bad reviews.
From my understanding, it isn’t really about much of anything. Just like the rest of his movies.
You saw commercials for this?
I think it was on something I was watching on Hulu, so we can all rest assured I was one of eight people in the continental US who saw a commercial for Amsterdam.
People with cable these days, amirite?
The advertising makes it look like the kind of movie that people in movies would watch, very broad and big and dumb so that the audience knows “Oh, the characters in THIS movie are watching a worse movie.” Amsterdam looks like what George Clooney and Frances McDormand would go see on their second date in Burn After Reading, or one of “Gene’s Picks” from the episode of Seinfeld with the video store.
I think Elaine would be annoyed at being brought to a period piece with political commentary like Amsterdam and complain that they could be watching Sack Lunch instead.
I gave you a star for “Gene’s Pick’s”“Gene’s trash!” “I’m Gene”
Gene’s trash.
I thought the trailer did a solid job of selling the plot. It’s a murder mystery where the three wacky heroes get framed and learn there’s a larger conspiracy at play. Aide from the elephant of David o Russell, I thought the trailer looked fun. It just turned out the actual movie is a mess apparently, which doesn’t remotely surprise me, since American hustle had really strong trailers and then I loathed that movie.
I felt the same about American Hustle. The trailer looked great (and was, I think, more focused and better edited than Amsterdam’s) but the overall movie was a mess. The editing of the Amsterdam trailer is just brutal to me, and you can see so many great actors trying so hard to be acting. It threw me off and makes the film’s tone hard to suss out. Basically, even though I got a (very) rough idea of the film’s subject, I also got a real American Hustle vibe from it—as in, if you go see this, you’re going to be similarly disappointed.
My big hatred of hustle was how loose the movie was, with every actor trying to loudly out-act everyone else. Amsterdam definitely gave me vibes of that, so even with my interest, I was never going to see this at a cinema. Maybe Disney plus.
Thinking back yeah. It was supposed to be about ABSCAM but ended up just being about a whole lot of different things and I can’t even really recall the whole plot.
A context-free TV spot is the quintessential “the studio knows it has a turkey it cannot salvage even in a 15-second commercial” move.
Now, now—marketing like this can work. 🙃🙃
My one thought during the trailer was that in a better world this would be a Coen brothers movie. Since then, the only thought I’ve given it is to wonder who did the song. Ten Years After I think? Which vaguely Claptonish early-70s dude was that?It sounds like the movie fully earns my level of interest, not that I’ll ever find out.
Agreed—the trailer refused to tell what this was about. (Babylon’s trailer is similarly way-too-much-of-way-too-much, but you at least get a sense of the period and basic idea.) Amsterdam’s spot comes off like contemporary actors playing antic noir farce dress-up, and gives us no reason to care.
I’ve seen the trailer maybe 10 times and gun to my head I can’t tell you what it’s about other than CAST!: The Movie
CAST!: The Movie is now what I’m going to call it in my head rather than its actual title.
Absolutely, terrible trailer and commercials. Tons of big names, you can see it’s a period piece, comedy? murder mystery? What is it? Give us a hook.
David O. Russell is one of the most grossly over-represented filmmakers on the planet. I can’t stand a single one of his films (I’ve tried to make it through ten minutes of American Hustle. No!), and I refuse to make an effort for this one. He is a false icon.
Besides Russell being a massive asshole, maybe audiences are catching on that his movies kinda suck**though I rather liked one of his early ones, Flirting with Disaster. All of his other movies I’ve seen are just OK at best to overtly annoying.
There was this slightly off-kilter edge to his early stuff that kept them at least interesting, but after ‘I Heart Huckabees’ he veered really hard into Oscar bait crowdpleasers and lost that spark.
Flirting with Disaster is great (and hilarious), but pretty much all his other movies have been some combination of mediocre and/or over-rated.
I heart Huckabees is one of my favorite movies, and that being in my Nerve.com profile is what persuaded my now wife to send me a “wink” on that primitive dating platform. So thanks for that, David O Russel.
I thought Three Kings was great. Not so much with the rest.
I love Three Kings and have no use for the rest of his work, so it makes me happy that that’s the one where he apparently got whooped.
I only liked The Fighter, and that’s mostly because of the performances of Christian Bale and Melissa Leo.
Flirting With Disaster, I Heart Huckabees and Three Kings are all classics of modern comedy. Not debatable
Well it is not a superhero or “ex-military family man dead wife revenge” movie so why would people go see it in a movie theater (snark)
A critically loathed action film or comedy can be a lot of fun. But David O. Russell is a critical darling. If this movie doesn’t appeal to them, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to see it.
TIL Amsterdam is not Babylon. I’m getting old.
But also I couldn’t tell you what this movie is about and I’ve never been huge into “Look at how many STARS we packed into this movie!” stuff. Thank god Knives Out was legit funny.
There are like three or four comments here all saying some version of “What is this about?!” so sorry to pick on yours specifically, but what are you talking about? I haven’t seen it, but the trailer clearly shows a dead body, that at least one of the three friends are being framed for murdering, and they’re trying to get out of trouble by enslisting the help of some other friends while dodging the police and finding whoever set them up. It’s not a novel plot, but neither is it somehow inscrutable.Have we swung away from complaining about trailers giving the whole movie away and are now on ‘trailers don’t tell me what the movie is about’?
The most likely culprit is the trailer looked so rote and uninspired that it left me with no actual memory as to what the plot could be. I confess I only watched it once.
Oh, that makes sense then. I’ve seen it a dozen times at least. It’s not being overplayed, but I see a lot of movies.
“Thank god Knives Out was legit funny.”Much of the dialogue was intended to be funny, but man is it inane and all the actors strained for laughs.
At least with the trailer for Knives Out, you knew what that movie was about and bit about who the characters were that you wanted to see all those names.
For a good month, I thought that thing with Sam Rockwell was this movie also and that both were the Knives Out sequel. A little quirk goes a long way. We’re up to our eyes.
My impression is that Rockwell is relatively reserved in the trailer for See How They Run. Perhaps because he had to speak in a British accent and had to concentrate on doing that solidly enough to fit with a cast from across the pond rather than being wacky.
I think it’s because straight people didn’t show up.
First I am even hearing about this movie.
The movies that are doing well at the far end of the pandemic are still mostly ones that demand to be seen on a big screen.
Nothing about this movie, which looks worth a watch on streaming, suggests that a TV won’t be perfectly adequate to watch it on.
I very strongly prefer seeing movies in the theater, but yeah this one absolutely says “Sunday evening at home over a glass of wine” to me.
It’s playing at an excellent, reserved seat, food and booze service at your seat, theater five minutes from my house. I’m still, “No rush to see this on a big screen. I can wait for it on streaming.”
Good! He made Lily Tomlin cry.
Tomlin was able to dismiss him when he was having his tantrum. Amy Adams is the one who was more bothered by him.
Tomlin seemed to have given back as much as she got. I think she took a little bit of a career hit after that though.
This failure couldn’t have happened to a more deserving piece of shit than Russell. As if the numerous incidents of physical, sexual and emotional abuse weren’t enough, maybe the loss of one hundred million dollars will finally kill this garbage’s career.
I’m still sore over what an overrated, loud and smug piece of shit American hustle was. That was before I learned Russell terrorised amy Adams.
And how Amsterdam was essentially him trying to rehash the formula of American Hustle, by loosely fictionalizing an obscure event in American history (which goes to show how badly Amsterdam was marketed, that you’d have no idea from the advance materials that it’s based on a true story), and then fill it with big name stars in the hopes of completely snowing over the Academy, right down to Robert De Niro in a meaningless cameo. And after appearing in two catastrophic flops in a role, Taylor Swift really needs to re-evaluation her acting ambitions.
Isn’t De Niro the only one whose character is based on a real person?
Apparently so. His claim of the business plot to install a puppet fascist s Apparently a point of dispute. No arrests were ever made. That seems to be the sole point of reality in amsterdam. To be fair, Russell uses another smug hustle style “some of this actually happened” title in the trailer. The actual characters aside from DeNiro are fictional.
Yes, he’s based on “that guy from The Godfather”
Taylor will stop acting once she wins an Oscar.
To be fair, she was one of the few actors who actually emerged from cats with a performance to actually enjoy. It’s a shame swift wasn’t in more of that film.
When will she start?
LOL!!!!!
Bale with a glass eye reminded me of his near identical role in the big short. Which made me genuinely wonder why Bale seems to be fascinated by characters with glass eyes. It also reminded me I generally enjoy the big short, and Adam mckay at his most smug is still a damn sight more enjoyable than Russell.
He’s so method he pulled out his eye. Take that Viggo! But now I guess he can only play Odin.
I did read that Christian Bale can make his eye drop down to one side as if it were a glass eye, so that might be why.
The Big Short is good in the same way Moneyball is good (other than both being by Michael Lewis) – they keep it breezy with top actors using all their charisma, despite what could be excruciatingly boring topics.
You would have thought after the videos of him being a complete psycho on I Heart Huckabees would have dented his career but no.
I admit I need to revisit 3 Kings, especially after reading some of the on-set crap that happened, but it just feels like another notch in the Russell belt of overblown films that are nowhere near as good as the rest of the world thinks they are.
i once saw two women on magic mushrooms in the van gogh museum in amsterdam. out of their minds.
I’d watch that movie
Don’t care, seeing it on Thursday. Too many names and too much absurdity in the trailer not to.
You saw the trailer ?! Where?!
I hope Russell fully eats shit for this and the actors escape unscathed.
zooms along unexpected narrative curves with a tremendous self-confidence it mistakes for grace. In actuality, it’s more of a shamble, like a sloppy guy at a bar telling a farfetched tale signifying not-too-much.Feel like this also could have been American Hustle’s review.
I think I understand what the reviewer was getting at with this passage but don’t think it needed a second printing.
Thanks for the spoiler at the end of an article about a movie that is harping on the fact that it has not yet been seen by a lot of people.
It’s not a spoiler if they show it in the trailer.
I liked it. I’m pretty sure the political plot was shrouded in the advertising to trick Trumpists into seeing the movie and getting mad.
never saw one trailer, had no idea Swift was in it, do not care for David O Russell anyway.I feel bad for Margot.
I think if we all send her positive vibes she will be fully recovered by this afternoon.
But please, write 50 more articles about Bros bombing instead, when shit like Amsterdam loses studios WAYYY more money.
It seems like I am in the minority here, but I saw this last night (value night at the chain cinema, so not boosting box office numbers much) and it was rather enjoyable. The scenes were good, but the screening was not even half full. I would say if you want to go out to the movies, this would be a good choice but don’t force yourself to it.I think we are heading towards the end times with regards to cinema, where the only real films that get much money are superhero films and whatever James Cameron is doing with Avatar that will be visually appealing on the big screen but suck when translated to your TV.
They had a real opportunity to tell a meaningful tale of three Americans visiting Amsterdam, going to hash bars and the red light district and all the other stereotypes we associate with the city. But now they must pay the price for their lack of vision.
I need to get this off my chest and I feel like this is as good a place as any: for years, I have consistently confused David Fincher and David O. Russell. They both make thematically dark, sort of gritty movies and only recently, if I pause to think about it, can I remember which one made which movie.