Taika Waititi's 'Klara and the Sun' Opens to Disastrous $725K Weekend

Taika Waititi's 'Klara and the Sun' landed in theaters Friday, and if you blinked you might have missed it -- not because it's a little art-house gem nobody told you about, but because Sony quietly set fire to its own release before the weekend even started.

According to figures reported by Deadline, the film earned just $725,000 across its opening three days at 880 locations -- and $85,000 of that came from Thursday-night previews. To put it plainly: some of those theaters were selling roughly five tickets per showing. The film's projected budget, as reported by World of Reel, was around $20 million.

The collapse started at the London Film Festival, where the film premiered on October 15. Reviews out of BFI were rough enough to force Sony's hand. As reported by Collider, the studio had originally planned roughly 1,900 theaters; that number got cut to 880 before opening day. The critical reception hardened the math. According to Coming Soon, the film currently sits at 24% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics broadly faulting it for swapping Ishiguro's quiet interiority for misplaced comic energy.

And there's the real story. Ishiguro's 2021 novel is a precise, almost clinical meditation on love, obsolescence, and what it means to be seen. The book gives you Klara's point of view from inside a solar-powered android who watches the world through a shop window and constructs her understanding of human grief piece by piece. It's not a warm film waiting to happen -- it's a literary puzzle that rewards patience. Waititi, whose best work ('Jojo Rabbit,' 'What We Do in the Shadows') runs on irreverence and warmth, was always a curious fit for material that asks you to sit with its strangeness rather than laugh through it.

The cast on paper is formidable. Jenna Ortega plays Klara opposite Amy Adams as Josie's mother, with Natasha Lyonne and Steve Buscemi rounding out the ensemble. The screenplay was co-written by Dahvi Waller, who cut her teeth on 'Mrs. America,' and Waititi himself. The source material, as described in the film's synopsis via Sony, follows Klara as an Artificial Friend who bonds with a sick girl named Josie, whose mother buys her to ease the family's isolation. It's a story about dependency and mortality dressed up in sci-fi clothes -- not exactly a casual October Friday night.

The timing didn't help either. This was the same weekend 'Clayface' opened to over $24 million and 'Wildwood,' Laika's animated film, took an estimated $10.5 million, according to The Numbers. 'Klara' wasn't competing -- it was just standing in the rain.

Where this leaves Waititi is a genuinely interesting question. 'Next Goal Wins' flopped in 2023. 'Thor: Love and Thunder' in 2022 was his most commercially successful film and his most derided. 'Jojo Rabbit' remains the high-water mark. Three swings and two misses since then is a pattern that studios notice. And where it leaves Ortega is worth watching: she's a star with real screen magnetism whose best film choices, 'Scream VI' and the 'Wednesday' series, have leaned into genre with intention. This one asked something different of her -- asked her to play an AI with wondering eyes and no irony -- and audiences, at least this weekend, weren't showing up to find out how she answered.

A film can still find its audience; some don't. But with numbers this small out of the gate, it's hard to see the path.

Sources cited:
- Deadline (https://deadline.com/2026/10/box-office-clayface-you-can-see-everything-1237171500/)
- Collider (https://collider.com/klara-and-the-sun-jenna-ortega-taika-waititi-removed-from-1000-theaters/)
- Coming Soon (https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/2212038-jenna-ortega-amy-adams-klara-and-the-sun-box-office)
- World of Reel (https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2026/10/23/box-office-clayface-hits-35m-in-previews-you-can-see-everything-eyes-20m-weekend-klara-and-the-sun-makes-only-85k-and-wildwood-is-in-trouble)
- The Numbers (https://www.the-numbers.com/)
- Deadline (review) (https://deadline.com/2026/10/klara-and-the-sun-review-taiki-waititi-jenna-ortega-amy-adams-1237158580/)