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Why Paramount Risked (and Lost) So Much Money on Better Man
Paramount spent $25 million on distribution rights for Better Man. But over its opening three days, the film pulled in a dismal $1.2 million.
In light of the abject and crushing box-office failure of Paramount’s Robbie Williams biographical jukebox musical, Better Man,last weekend, the question around Hollywood was not so much: Why didn’t audiences turn out to see a deliriously artful, $110 million, R-rated pop biopic plotted around a singing, dancing, cocaine-snorting CGI chimpanzee? While tracing the career arc, mental-health challenges, and descent into substance abuse of Williams — the former lead singer of the British boy band Take That, a 1990s–’00s tabloid mainstay, and European superstar who was something like the Harry Styles of his day — Better Man transcends mere pop hagiography thanks to the batshit filmmaking audacity of director Michael Gracey (of The Greatest Showman fame). In February 2024 — just months removed from the resolution of debilitating twin Hollywood strikes and with the studio-movie supply chain still in shambles — Paramount paid $25 million for North American distribution rights to Better Man, which was independently financed and partially funded by an Australian government incentive program (testament to Williams’s abiding popularity Down Under).
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