Why The Creator Bombed At The Box Office

2023 has been a pretty weird, wild year when it comes to box office gains. Superhero movies like "Blue Beetle" and "The Flash" are facing diminishing returns as audiences seem to tire of the (sometimes repetitive) genre. "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," which both released on July 21 and created the phenomenon dubbed "Barbenheimer," saw absolutely absurd box office numbers, with "Barbie" handily crossing the billion dollar mark within a few weeks and "Oppenheimer" performing quite well for a three-hour historical epic about the father of the atomic bomb. 

With so many projects focusing on real-life stories or existing intellectual property, it feels rare to see daring original works ... and unfortunately for writer-director Gareth Edwards, his latest project, "The Creator," flopped at the box office, making just over $30 million worldwide during its opening weekend on an $80 million budget. Sure, it had to contend with "Saw X," but this is still a fairly bleak turnout.

Edwards — who's known for "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" and his 2014 take on "Godzilla" — co-wrote the sci-fi epic alongside Chris Weitz, and it's definitely disappointing that this meticulously executed movie underperformed so drastically upon its release. So what happened here? Why didn't "The Creator" become a huge hit?

"The Creator," which tells the story of a futuristic world where humans find themselves at war with artificial intelligence, is a daring concept ... and the fact is that Gareth Edwards assembled an extraordinarily capable cast without any major movie stars among them. The film is led by John David Washington — who, despite outstanding performances in projects like "Tenet" and "BlacKkKlansman," might still be best known as Denzel's son — and a small cast that includes Gemma Chan, Allison Janney, and Ken Watanabe. Unfortunately for "The Creator," it seems none of these actors proved to be a huge draw.

This isn't to say that Chan, Janney, and Watanabe aren't marketable stars — all of them have appeared in blockbusters and critical darlings from "Crazy Rich Asians" to "I, Tonya" to a handful of "Transformers" movies, respectively — but with an original concept like "The Creator," it probably needed more star power. Washington, Chan, Janney, Watanabe, and the rest of the cast are all extremely talented, but it wasn't enough to sell audiences on "The Creator."

A lot of 2023 releases have run into this problem, so it's definitely a factor — and that's the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, which has been going strong since July. After the Writers Guild of America started striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in May, actors joined them on the picket lines, citing concerns about streaming residuals and the advent of AI technology in entertainment (more on that particular sticking point in a moment).

The issue is that none of the movie's stars could promote "The Creator" without "scabbing," or crossing the picket lines, as discussing past, present, or future work is prohibited for SAG-AFTRA members during the strike. John David Washington and his co-stars stood firm alongside fellow actors for fair pay and a solid deal from the studios. Plus, during the lead-up to the release of "The Creator," late-night shows were still off the air while the WGA finalized their deal with the AMPTP, so the regular outlets for actors to promote their work were also shut down. "The Creator" didn't bomb specifically due to the strike, but it certainly didn't help things.

As writers and actors in the entertainment industry try to ensure that studios won't find ways to completely replace them with AI technology, "The Creator" comes along, spreading a message that not all AI is bad, actually. For most of the movie, audiences are led to believe that the AI is evil and the humans are good. Ultimately, it's revealed that the robots — or, as they're called in the movie, "robotic simulants" — just want to exist in peace and leave humans alone. The massive destruction they cause at the beginning of the narrative is an unintended mistake.

People are learning more and more about AI right now, especially thanks to the strike, and that probably didn't help "The Creator" very much either. In a time when actors and writers are indicating studios would happily replace real humans with digital likenesses, asking audiences to sympathize with a cute robot child might be kind of a stretch. Certainly, nobody's saying Gareth Edwards is arguing we should have more AI in the entertainment industry, but the timing definitely isn't ideal.

So, "The Creator" is about a man named Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) who, after losing his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), protects a childlike robotic simulant named Alpha-O, or "Alphie" (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) and keeps her safe from the United States government. Does the marketing for the movie indicate anything about that relatively simple plot? No, not really. 

It's perfectly reasonable that Gareth Edwards wanted to keep some of the film's bigger twists and surprises under wraps, but the point here is that between a labyrinthine trailer and posters that focused more on the robotic characters than the human ones, potential viewers could have been a little confused as to what "The Creator" even is. Despite earning decent reviews from critics, the fact remains that a myriad of factors led to "The Creator" flopping at the box office. If you feel like giving it a little boost, "The Creator" is in theaters now.