A fresh take on horror classic Bride of Frankenstein that finally allows for the titular character to get a proper spotlight, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! debuted in theaters over the weekend, ending the weekend in the #3 spot on the domestic box office charts.
The Bride! scared up $7,260,000 across 3,304 theaters here in the United States, with the genre-bending spectacle finishing the weekend with $13,560,000 at the worldwide box office.
The catch? The Bride! is far from the sort of low-to-mid budget horror movie that could turn a profit with this sort of box office action. Unfortunately, the Warner Bros. release is a big budget experiment, with the reported production budget somewhere in the ballpark of $80 million. Add hefty marketing costs on top of that and you’ve got a spend that exceeds $100 million.
The problem? There is zero chance of The Bride! even coming close to profitability during its theatrical run. This will end up being a huge loss for Warner Bros. when all is said and done.
Christian Bale is Frankenstein’s Monster and Jessie Buckley is the Bride of Frankenstein in The Bride!, which has proven quite divisive with fans and critics alike. The film is currently rotten on Rotten Tomatoes with a 59% Tomatometer score from critics, while fans have rated the film a bit higher at 73% on the site’s Popcornmeter. The film’s CinemaScore is a C+.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her 4-star review here on Bloody Disgusting, “Maggie Gyllenhaal gives both Mary Shelley and Frankenstein’s created mate agency in The Bride!, a bold, wildly imaginative reclamation of the classic Universal Monster character. Jessie Buckley stuns in a technically tricky and emotionally complex triple role as escort-turned-victim Ida, the rebellious undead Bride, and an enraged Mary Shelley from beyond the grave.”
In the bold new film, “A lonely Frankenstein (Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to ask groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (five-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening) to create a companion for him. The two revive a murdered young woman and The Bride (Buckley) is born. What ensues is beyond what either of them imagined: Murder! Possession! A wild and radical cultural movement! And outlaw lovers in a wild and combustible romance!”
