No actor wants to be dubbed with the dreaded tag of box office poison, but it’s a reputation Margot Robbie is inching closer and closer to securing after a quartet of colossal commercial catastrophes in a very short space of time.
In less than three years, the two-time Academy Award nominee sat by and watched as her Harley Quinn spinoff Birds of Prey, unconnected comic book compatriot The Suicide Squad, David O. Russell’s self-indulgent Babylon, and Damien Chazelle’s needlessly excessive Babylon all went down in a ball of flames at the multiplex.
What makes it even worse is that Robbie was either the top-billed female cast member, or the first name in the credits. It makes for alarming reading from the outside looking in, so much so that Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City is being predicted to flop based entirely on her involvement and nothing else.
Never mind the fact that sci-fi-tingerd comedy doesn’t release until June, bears nothing more than a vague synopsis about a stargazing convention gone awry, and hails from one of the finest filmmakers of the modern era; if Robbie is playing a substantial role, then there’s at least a 50/50 chance that disaster is looming on the horizon.
On the plus side, in the off-chance Asteroid City does crash and burn, there’s surely no chance that Greta Gerwig’s Barbie suffers a similar fate, even if it’s got the stones to open directly against Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer just one month later.