“The Alto Knights,” a crime thriller starring dueling Robert De Niros, made moviegoers an offer they easily refused.
The Warner Bros. film was D.O.A. over the weekend with $3.2 million at the domestic box office, one of the worst-ever starts for a major studio release. “The Alto Knights” also cratered overseas, earning $1.8 million for a bleak worldwide tally of $5.1 million. With a price tag above $45 million before marketing is taken into account, “The Alto Knights” is already one of the year’s biggest misfires.
Box office watchers, however, aren’t exactly scratching their heads to figure out what went wrong. They believe “The Alto Knights” hails from a genre — mobster movies — that’s been sleeping with the fishes for decades. Then critics rebuked the film, which landed a poor 37% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences, at least the few people who checked the film out, were kinder, giving it a “B” grade on CinemaScore exit polls. Still, those mixed scores don’t bode well for word-of-mouth.
“This kind of crime story has been out of style for years now,” says David A. Gross, who runs the FranchiseRe movie consulting firm. “Current soft theatrical market conditions are not going to help it.”
Directed by “Wag the Dog” and “Rain Man” filmmaker Barry Levinson and adapted by Nicholas Pileggi — best known for his work as a writer or producer on “Goodfellas,” “Casino” and “The Irishman” — the movie follows De Niro as Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, childhood friends who became two of New York’s most notorious organized crime bosses.
For a film like “The Alto Knights,” which already faces strong headwinds in this theatrical landscape, to have a shot at success, it needs rave reviews or potential awards chatter. Critics weren’t on board, though, with several calling the choice to have De Niro star opposite himself was unnecessarily confusing. The Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan described the stunt as “not just unnecessary, it’s supremely distracting.” (“It invites the question: Why?” he wrote in his review) and The New Yorker’s Justin Chang simply referred to the double casting as an “odd gimmick.”
It’s not like gangster movies were all the rage when Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav greenlit the film in 2022. His decision to grant the film a $45 million budget and theatrical release had prompted a few raised eyebrows on the studio lot at the time. Levinson, who began working on “The Alto Knights” (formerly titled “Wise Guys”) with Pileggi and producer Irwin Winkler before the pandemic, told Variety that Pileggi’s relationship with Zaslav had paved the way for the project to get made.
“Zaslav has known Nick, and somehow in a conversation [the film] came up, and Zaslav was intrigued by it,” Levinson said in an interview prior to the movie’s release. “That was sort of how it all came together.”
The studio also thought “The Alto Knights” could be another entry in De Niro’s pantheon of much-loved gangster films, several of which (like “Goodfellas” and “Mean Streets”) were produced by Warner Bros. For De Niro, “The Alto Knights” represented a return to the genre that made him a star. The 81-year-old became an enduring A-lister after classic Mafia movies like “The Godfather Part II,” “The Untouchables,” “Casino” and “Goodfellas.” He’s even parodied his deep association with Cosa Nostra cinema in the “Analyze This” films.
Yet it’s a type of film that’s 30 years past its sell-by date. Even Martin Scorsese’s starry “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a Western crime drama about the 1920 Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation, struggled at the box office against a $200 million budget. And Leonardo DiCaprio starred in that film, which was nominated for several Oscars, alongside De Niro. Meanwhile Levinson’s filmography over the past quarter-century has included such commercial misfires as 2015’s comedy “Rock the Kasbah,” 2014’s drama “The Humbling,” 2012’s horror mockumentary “The Bay” and 2006’s political comedy “Man of the Year.” The Oscar winner’s last significant theatrical hit was 1997’s “Wag the Dog,” which grossed $65 million against a $15 million budget.
“‘Alto Knights’ is a film of a bygone Hollywood era. The director and star are no longer box office draws,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “Warner Bros. didn’t do them any favors as they barely advertised the film. When a film doesn’t have major studio support in this marketplace, it’s bombs away at the box office.”
So who went to see “Alto Knights” in its opening weekend? Apparently, older white men and Canadians. According to exit polls, 60% of moviegoers were male and 60% were Caucasian (comparatively, 27% were Hispanic, 7% were Black, 3% were Asian and 3% were Native American). Nearly 90% were above the age of 25 and roughly 85% were over 35. Meanwhile three of the top four highest-grossing locations — Cineplex Queensway Toronto, Cineplex Winston Churchill Toronto, Cineplex Laval Montreal — were from America’s Neighbors to the North. New York City and Los Angeles typically have the top-earning theaters in North America.
“Seems like Canadians turned out for an adult drama, something that is unfortunately becoming more and more of a rarity in the North American marketplace,” Bock said.
“The Alto Knights” is the second consecutive theatrical misfire for Warner Bros. after Bong Joon Ho’s big budget sci-fi comedy “Mickey 17.” Coincidentally, both films feature a lead actor named Robert who plays multiple parts in the same movie. (In “Mickey 17,” Robert Pattinson portrays disposable employee whose body is able to regenerate for science.) In three weeks of release, “Mickey 17” has earned $40 million domestically and $110 million worldwide. It’s a respectable tally for the original swing, except that the film cost $118 million to produce. Since “Mickey 17” needed to earn more like $275 million to $300 million to break even, it’s now projected to lose $75 million to $80 million in its big screen run.
The studio’s fortunes should rebound in April with “A Minecraft Movie,” a Jack Black-led film adaptation of the popular video game that’s tracking for a decent opening weekend. And later in the year, there’s James Gunn’s “Superman” as well as follow-ups to “Mortal Kombat,” “Final Destination” and “The Conjuring.” Yet Warner Bros. has several other big swings on the calendar, including Paul Thomas Anderson’s $140 million “One Battle After Another” and Ryan Coogler’s $90 million vampire thriller “Sinners.”
In the interview before the debut of “The Alto Knights,” Levinson seemed sanguine about the volatility of the movie industry, which he’s been involved with for decades.
“There are a lot of obstacles in this business, and you just have to navigate it as best you can,” Levinson told Variety. “But there are the moments when you say, ‘Look, I’ve been able to do a lot of stories that interested me, and I was able to work with a lot of actors that I had a great, great working relationship with.’ The downside is the downside. But that comes with the territory.”
From Variety US