Four months ago, Apple began its new strategy of bringing films with big budgets to theaters with the help of studio partners. Now it is facing its first major stumble in this pricey campaign with Matthew Vaughn’s “Argylle,” the spy-action film which suffered a thudding $17.4 million domestic opening weekend and barely cracked $1 million in grosses on Monday.
Despite being ostensibly a more crowd-pleasing film, “Argylle” posted a lower opening than Apple’s darker awards plays “Killers of the Flower Moon” ($23.2 million opening) and “Napoleon” ($20.6 million over three days on Thanksgiving weekend). None of these films is likely to recoup their costs of over $200 million each.