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Despite rave reviews, Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" has failed to gain traction with audiences at the box office...In its first three weeks in cinemas, the film has captured just $36.6 million in global ticket sales. Its production budget was around $100 million, not including marketing costs.

All hope for Steven Spielberg’s racially divisive West Side Story remake died in week two, plummeting 68 percent with a humiliating take of just $3.4 million. After ten days in release, which includes two weekends, this historic box office bomb has grossed just $17.9 million. The hope had been that word of mouth would give Woke Side box office legs. Sorry, nope. No legs. Just two little stumps. Between production and marketing, this stinker probably cost close to $200 million. As a result, Disney’s going to lose a fortune.

I had serious reservations about the Steven Spielberg version of the film classic West Side Story. Rumors of wokeness haunted the new movie from the first casting call through to its dismal opening weekend. I expected to wince throughout, but Spielberg did something brave and unexpected. He gave the Jets a rationale for their existence and their resistance. The 1961 original did not. As a 14-year-old living in a "transitional" neighborhood very much like the one the Jets and Sharks inhabited and not far away, I fully identified with the white gang, the Jets. My friends, even my black friends,...

Former President Barack Obama has given his official seal of approval to Steven Spielberg’s woke box-office disaster West Side Story, naming it as one of his favorite movies of 2021. In what has become an annual Obama tradition, the 44th president tweeted a list of his top movies of the past year. And as usual, the list is a precisely calibrated mix of indie darlings, prestige foreign titles, and woke Hollywood fare — all seemingly designed to further ingratiate him with the elite tastemaker crowd, as if their political fealty was ever in doubt.

The new “West Side Story” is, so far, a box-office flop. Steven Spielberg’s much-anticipated remake of the landmark 1961 musical received rave reviews and has been called a masterpiece. Yet its first weekend theatrical release yielded only $10.5 million, which Variety called “a dismal result for a movie of its scale and scope.” --- It’s not woke, it’s wonderful. “America,” that most American of songs, so knowing but not jaded, is done differently from the original but better, more communally, and it’s just as joyous and comic. The Journal’s Joe Morgenstern used exactly the right word to describe this movie:...

Full disclosure: I despise Steven Spielberg movies and dislike both Romeo and Juliet and the 1961 West Side Story (WSS) movie. For that reason, I take particular delight in noting that Steven Spielberg's remake of WSS may have enthralled critics, but no one is rushing to see it. And no wonder, given that it's so darn woke that parts of it are in a language most Americans don't speak, but Spielberg refused to include subtitles.Let me quickly get through my biases. I hate Steven Spielberg movies because I find them overblown, predictable, and incredibly boring. I also dislike the way...

NEW YORK (AP) — Despite critical acclaim and two years-worth of anticipation, Steven Spielberg’s lavish “West Side Story” revival made little noise at the box office, debuting with $10.5 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday — a worrisome result for a movie industry struggling to recapture its finger-snapping rhythm. A dazzling widescreen adaptation and Spielberg’s first musical, “West Side Story” was one of the year’s most eagerly awaited titles. With a script by Tony Kushner and Rita Moreno returning to her breakthrough film 60 years later, the $100-million “West Side Story” epitomizes a grand-scale prestige film that...

"West Side Story" had little to sing about this weekend. 20th Century Studios' remake of the 1961 classic musical brought in an estimated $10.5 million for its opening in North America this weekend. This total was below expectations, which projected the film to make closer to $15 million in its debut weekend. The total is a bit surprising considering that the film had a lot working in its favor. For starters, it is directed by Steven Spielberg, one of the most recognizable and blockbuster directors in history. His name alone appeared to not be enough to get people to buy...

Director Steven Spielberg’s woke West Side Story remake is a box office catastrophe expected to open in the $10 million range. How awful is that? Well, do you remember that previous woke catastrophe, In the Heights? It opened to $11.5 million. West Side Story is projected to bomb harder than In the Heights, lol. Even so, the In the Heights’ production budget was only $55 million.