As much as audiences have come to lament the raft of reboots, remakes, sequels, and reimaginings that flood the marketplace each and every year without fail, they’ve got nothing on William Shakespeare adaptations. The Bard’s work is always lurking in the background somewhere ready to make an impact, but 2015’s Macbeth showed that acclaim doesn’t always match interest.
Director Justin Kurzel’s faithful stab at the legendary tome applied plenty of visual flair while remaining true to the source material, with critics responding in kind by awarding it a Certified Fresh approval rating of 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It was a long way away from being a blockbuster, too, with the hard-hitting and brutal period piece coming in at a fairly thrifty $20 million.
That’s a drop in the ocean compared to what the genre usually costs when it comes bearing a talented filmmaker behind the camera and such proven thespians as Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Paddy Considine, Elizabeth Debicki, and Sean Harris in front of it, but Macbeth ended up bombing hard after barely making it past $16 million in ticket sales.
Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth landed a mere five years later and scored even better notices to prove the futility of trying to stand out among the crowd, even if it did mitigate the risk of financial losses by securing a distribution deal with Apple TV, something Kurzel’s version would have definitely benefited from given the dozens upon dozens of literal and spiritual movies based on the story to have been churned out over the decades.
That being said, the fact FlixPatrol has named it as one of the top-viewed titles on the Chili platform this weekend does hint this particular iteration of Macbeth is going to have at least some sort of longevity, which will have to do.
