It seems that Robert Downey Jr. has gone from one extreme to the other, with the actor following up the record-breaking, $2.79 billion-grossing biggest movie of all time Avengers: Endgame with one of the biggest busts of his career in Universal Pictures’ Dolittle.
The fantasy adventure film, based upon Hugh Lofting’s The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle and directed by Stephan Gaghan, grossed just $22.5 million across the Friday to Sunday period in North America, for an estimated four-day holiday weekend of $30 million. It has grossed a further $17 million from South Korea and Australia, its only international markets so far.
Given its hefty $175 million budget (which included three weeks of extensive reshoots supervised by directors Jonathan Liebesman and Chris McKay), additional marketing costs and poor reviews, Dolittle looks on course to be another expensive flop for Universal after last month’s Cats horror show, unless it somehow manages to over-perform when it rolls out into its remaining overseas territories.
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Dolittle features a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr., Jessie Buckley, Harry Collett, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, Kumail Nanjiani, John Cena, Emma Thompson, Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Jim Broadbent, Marion Cotillard, Frances de la Tour, Carmen Ejogo, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Tom Holland, and Craig Robinson.
