Having gone from a surefire awards season contender to one of the biggest box office bombs of all-time in the blink of an eye, good news has been few and far between for Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. It might be the smallest of victories, but the polarizing ode to excess has at least manage to secure a number one spot on streaming, even if it’s way too late.
Per FlixPatrol, the 1920s-set tale of drink, drugs, debauchery, and the madness of Hollywood has instantly debuted as the number one most-watched movie on Paramount Plus, so we can finally take the champagne off ice and celebrate the fact the ambitious $80 million catastrophe has come good at long last.
Of course, it’s not going to do a thing to prevent Babylon from winding up an eye-watering $150 million in the red when subscribers are already paying their monthly fee, nor will it cover up the embarrassment of a film that was projected to require at least $250 million in ticket sales just to break even debuting to less than two percent of the magic number.
It wasn’t a good year for star Margot Robbie, either, who also had the misfortune of lending her talents to David O. Russell’s similarly star-studded but every bit as farcical Amsterdam, so the two-time Academy Award nominee will be hoping that Barbie helps arrest the slide that’s seen her show up in an alarming number of cataclysmic commercial failures in such a relatively short space of time.