‘Sad lost souls’: Taika Waititi lambasts critics after Klara and the Sun box-office disaster — SkimNews
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- Taika Waititi launched a social-media attack on critics, calling them “sad lost souls” who failed to become artists and labeling those who disliked Jojo Rabbit “irrelevant,” “out of touch,” “obsolete” and “in the bin.”
- Klara and the Sun opened in North America with $701,000 from 880 venues, averaging just under $800 per cinema and ranking 16th, against a reported $44m production cost.
- Klara and the Sun dropped 79% to $145,000 in its second North American weekend; its UK opening drew £176,000 from 368 venues, averaging £477 per cinema.
- Rotten Tomatoes displayed a 74% audience score against a 26% critic score from 90 reviews; Waititi cited that disparity while saying he had not read a review aimed at him or his peers in almost 15 years but “do listen to the people.”
- Peter Bradshaw gave Klara and the Sun a one-star Guardian review, calling it “unbearably mannered” and “unspeakably acted,” and had previously dismissed Waititi’s 2019 film Jojo Rabbit as “a terrible film.”
- Wendy Ide called the adaptation “a thin and cloying thing” in The Observer, while LA Times reviewer Tim Grierson said Waititi’s “calculated gooeyness” became “downright exasperating.”
- Wicker opened with $5.7m from 1,471 North American venues at a $3,906 average, far above Klara and the Sun’s $701,000 debut; You Can See Everything took $18.7m in its second weekend and had reached $63.8m cumulatively.
Why it matters: The commercial stakes for Waititi are concrete: $701,000 in North American opening revenue against a reported $44m production cost. His contrast between Rotten Tomatoes’ 74% audience score and 26% critic score also shows that professional reviewers, rather than audiences as a whole, supplied the sharpest negative verdict.
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