Music
Rebel Wilson’s film The Deb will have to find its audience on a streaming service after a disappointing opening in cinemas on the weekend.
Expectations that the comic musical would struggle because of a tangle of lawsuits in Australia and the US that severely limited its promotion proved accurate when it took just $116,000 on 188 screens across Australia.
According to box office data from Numero, The Deb averaged a poor $618 per screen.
That was despite some enthusiastic reviews that included Sandra Hall in this masthead praising the film’s “joyous mood” and writing that it was “a wonderful mix of the raucous and the heartfelt and charges along at an exhilarating pace”. In The Australian, Nikki Gemmell described The Deb as “hilarious: filthy, fun, but most of all moving”.
Adapted by Hannah Reilly from her 2022 stage musical, The Deb is about a city private school student (Charlotte MacInnes) who is sent to stay with her country cousin (Natalie Abbott) just before a debutante ball.
After the film’s release was postponed from earlier in the year, it opened in cinemas just before MacInnes’ defamation action against Wilson begins in the Federal Court next Monday. The film’s producers have also lodged defamation lawsuits against Wilson, who has filed a countersuit. Wilson directs and also stars in the film.
“I feel genuinely upset for the filmmakers,” Palace Cinemas chief executive Benjamin Zeccola said. “So many people work on a film, and it’s a tragedy. I hope everyone can pick themselves up and move on.”
The box office return meant The Deb would lose many of its sessions from Thursday.
“On the upside, hopefully having a theatrical release and [being] reviewed by the major papers over the weekend, at least it now has some awareness that it didn’t have a few weeks ago,” Zeccola said. “That will help it going into the next stage of its life in home viewing.”
Peter Howard, the proprietor of Howard Cinemas in Taree and Tuncurry in regional NSW, called the opening figures “quite disastrous” for a film aimed at a broad audience.
He said the “public shenanigans” made it a case study in how to sabotage a release in the public’s eyes.
“It was my lowest ranked film,” Howard said. “I’m finishing the film on Wednesday.”
While he personally enjoyed The Deb, Howard said it needed a judicious edit and had been unable to overcome the legal dramas that started even before the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.