Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams’ Klara and the Sun Opens to Just $85K After Sony Slashes Theater Count

Klara and the Sun was supposed to be one of the wider awards-season plays of the fall, but Sony has quietly turned it into a much smaller release. The Taika Waititi-directed sci-fi drama, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel and starring Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, opened on October 23 in roughly 850 theaters nationwide, a steep drop from the more than 1,900 locations it was originally booked into for a wide release.

Why Klara and the Sun Lost So Many Theaters

The theater cut followed a rough premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 15, where early reviews landed hard. Variety called the adaptation “calamitous,” and the film currently sits at a 25 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus pointing to a tonal mismatch between Ishiguro’s quiet, introspective novel and the finished film’s broader approach. Facing those numbers, Sony scaled the release back to a more cautious rollout rather than risk a wide opening with little audience behind it.

Jenna Ortega stars as the artificial friend Klara in Sony Pictures’ adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel.

A Rough Opening Day

The smaller footprint didn’t help much at the box office either. Klara and the Sun earned only about $85,000 across roughly 780 theaters in Friday previews, and early industry tracking has the film on pace for an opening weekend in the low single digit millions, well short of what Sony would need to recoup a reported $20 million budget co-financed with Spyglass Media Group. A full three-day total wasn’t confirmed as of this writing, but nothing in the early numbers suggests a turnaround over the rest of the weekend.

Buried in a Crowded Fall Weekend

Klara and the Sun also picked a brutal weekend to open in. DC’s Clayface, whose director James Watkins recently told Gamersuniverse he had total creative freedom to reinvent Gotham City, is on track to top the box office in its debut. A24’s documentary You Can See Everything is overperforming expectations, and Laika’s stop-motion feature Wildwood is also fighting for a slice of the same shrinking pool of moviegoers. With three other new releases chasing the same audience, there was little room left for a film that had already lost much of its goodwill before opening weekend even began.

Both of Klara and the Sun’s leads could have used a hit. Amy Adams, a six-time Oscar nominee, hasn’t anchored a box office success since Arrival, and Jenna Ortega is coming off underperformers in Death of a Unicorn and Hurry Up Tomorrow. The film also marks a rare box office stumble for Waititi, who adapted Ishiguro’s story about an artificial companion navigating love, mortality and human connection with a cast that also includes Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi, Rachel House and Mia Tharia. Simon Baker was originally cast in a supporting role but was cut from the finished film entirely.

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Picture Source: Sony Pictures Entertainment