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Clint Eastwood’s latest film Richard Jewell flops at box office amid controversy
Clint Eastwood’s latest film Richard Jewell flopped at box office amid controversy about the portrayal of a female journalist. Read on to know more.
Clint Eastwood’s latest release Richard Jewell failed to spread its magic on the big screens, amid controversy about the portrayal of a female reporter. The film, which revolves around the 1996 Olympics bombing, marked his worst box office opening as a director. The drama film is based on the real-life story of a security guard named Richard Allensworth Jewell who gets falsely accused of being involved in the bomb plot; it ended up collecting a dismal USD 5 million from 2,502 theaters over the weekend, The Wrap reported. The film hit the movie theatres on December 13.
The lukewarm opening comes after Atlanta newspaper demanded the studio to issue an official statement acknowledging that the filmmaker used creative liberty while dramatically portraying a female reporter sleeping with a source to get first-hand information in order to break an exclusive story. In a statement given to Variety, the Atlanta Journal Constitution asserted that the allegation that former reporter Kathy Scruggs got intimate with an FBI agent to learn that a security guard was being investigated in connection with the bombing is baseless. Scruggs, who is portrayed by Olivia Wilde in the film, was the first journalist to break the story that the FBI was investigating a security guard in connection with the blast.
According to Page Six, as a result of its poor box office performance, the movie could be the second-worst nationwide opening for the 89-year-old director. The first being the 1980’s Billy Bronco, which garnered USD 3.7 million. The actor-director’s critically acclaimed 2014 film American Sniper minted USD 89 million in its opening weekend and his 2016 film Sully raked in USD 35 million.
