Why ‘Death On The Nile’ Was A Frightening Box Office Tragedy

Disney has announced that Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile will debut on Hulu on March 29. That’s actually a “normal” 45-day theatrical window (plus a few days toward the first Tuesday after that window), and honestly we’re talking about a movie that earned $280,000 on day 27, so it’s not like the film isn’t being given a chance in conventional theatrical existence. That said, the total box office failure of the $90 million, all-star murder mystery is a deeply disconcerting whiff. Unlike most of the films that have outright failed amid the last two Covid-specific years, this one might well have been a solid hit, possibly an outright smash, in non-Covid times. The question, and I honestly don’t know the answer, is whether its under-$40 million domestic and current $115 million worldwide cume means anything beyond folks not wanting a bunch of Kenneth Branagh-as-Hercule Poirot movies.

Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express opened in November 2017 with a hearty $29 million domestic before legging out to $102 million in North America and (thanks to $34 million in China and $32 million in the United Kingdom) $355 million worldwide. That was a massive success on a $55 million budget, and exactly the kind of “big movie for grown ups” which 20th Century Fox had been prioritizing just as Walt Disney began getting serious about buying Fox’s film and television divisions. So, understandably, we got a sequel in the form of Death on the Nile. The picture was intended to open in December of 2019 but ended up being pushed to December 2020 in a move that made sense at the time. Alas, like Wonder Woman 1984, No Time to Die and Top Gun: Maverick, the pushed-to-2020 flick got kneecapped by a global pandemic.

No, I don’t think off-screen controversies had much effect on the overall box office. Sure, so had the film opened in 2019 that wouldn’t have been an issue as nobody would have been publically accusing Armie Hammer of being a cannibal (or, more seriously, being a sexual assailant) and (also presuming a 2020 release sans a pandemic) the circumstances related to Russell Brand and Letitia Wright’s vaccine hesitancy and Gal Gadot’s “Imagine” video would be non-existent. But I’d wager audiences don’t care about Hammer’s off-screen behavior because they didn’t care about Hammer’s onscreen behavior (he was never a draw/movie star) and couldn’t care less about Gadot offering up a “cringe” celebrity sing-along that made Twitter point-and-laugh. Sure, circumstances prevented a more robust marketing campaign, but the movie is the movie. And Death on the Nile was a well-reviewed sequel to the mostly well-received Murder on the Orient Express.

Unlike most of the Covid-era whiffs, think Snake Eyes, The Last Duel or even In the Heights (which sadly was a case of Film Twitter not remotely representing mainstream interest), Death on the Nile likely would have performed halfway decently under conventional circumstances. Would there have been some drop-off due to folks only being curious the first time? Sure. Would there have been less audience buzz for a cast headlined by Gadot, Hammer and Wright versus one headlined by Johnny Depp, Judi Dench and Michelle Pfeiffer? Quite possibly. But I don’t think it’s absurd to think that the film, which I’d argue was better than its (still pretty good) predecessor would have grossed around $250-$275 million worldwide. That wouldn’t be quite as profitable, but it would have been a healthy hit and a sign to maybe budget the third film closer to $75 million than $100 million.

But around $120 million worldwide is a 67% drop, a bigger loss than Alice Through the Looking Glass ($299 million versus Alice in Wonderland’s $1.025 billion cume). To be fair, sans China the drop is closer to 62%.Now the “optimistic” explanation is that the film suffered from the above-noted downturn factors which were essentially supercharged due to older audiences being less comfortable going to the movies and the whole “just stream it at home” mentality that has been foolishly pushed by too many executives, shareholders and pundits. I think if The Suicide Squad ($168 million) had opened in non-Covid times, its drop from Suicide Squad ($725 million in 2016) would have been closer to 51% (think The Secret Life of Pets 2’s $430 million cume versus Secret Life of Pets’ $875 million gross in 2016) than 77% (closer to, uh, Mannequin 2: On the Move’s 91% drop).

Conversely, has the pandemic and streaming push decimated the potential for crowdpleasing/commercial adult pictures to flourish to where there’s really no room for anything but kid-friendly IP, DC/Marvel movies and horror breakouts? It’s rotten luck that the deluge of “Can adult movies still succeed?” offerings were mostly courtesy of 20th Century Studios and Searchlight amid a period where Disney seemingly barely cared about actual Disney theatricals let along Fox holdovers. Without arguing that Disney dumped them (the marketing folks did the work), but it would be easier/safer to draw broad conclusions if the likes of Nightmare Alley and Death on the Nile weren’t just the slate from a single conflicted studio. Would House of Gucci have bombed at Disney? Would West Side Story been a hit for Universal? Was Death on the Nile a Covid casualty or a cautionary tale ushering in a grim post-Covid theatrical landscape?