The Marsh King’s Daughter has had a dismal opening weekend at the domestic box office. The movie, which is based on the 2017 Karen Dionne book of the same name, was directed by Limitless and Divergent‘s Neil Burger. Daisy Ridley stars as Helena Pelletier, a young woman who strives to protect her daughter when her cruel survivalist father escapes from prison.
Per Deadline, the Marsh King’s Daughter movie has barely been able to register at the domestic box office despite this weekend being the fourth lowest-grossing overall of the year to date. The top three movies (Five Nights at Freddy’s, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, and Killers of the Flower Moon) were all holdovers, with new releases Priscilla and What Happens Later taking No. 4 and No. 9 respectively. The Daisy Ridley title didn’t even land on the chart, taking in a gross of only $849,000 in 1,055 theaters.
Why The Marsh King’s Daughter Isn’t a Box Office Draw Despite a Stacked Cast
One curious thing about The Marsh King’s Daughter‘s lack of impact on the box office is the fact that it has such a stacked cast. Ridley, who starred in the new Star Wars trilogy, co-stars with another Star Wars veteran, Rogue One‘s Ben Mendelsohn, who also stars in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Skrull Talos. The rest of the cast is filled out by actors including Garrett Hedlund (Friday Night Lights, Tron: Legacy), Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), and Gil Birmingham (Twilight, Yellowstone).
While the cast has appeared in prominent arthouse titles as well as big franchise installments, they have largely tended to thrive as part of ensembles in IP-driven projects. While Ridley is a big-name actress, outside of franchises such as Star Wars, Peter Rabbit, and Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot movies, her box office draw has proven to be negligible. In fact, her highest-grossing non-franchise title was the 2021 Tom Holland movie Chaos Walking, which only earned $27.1 million despite its roughly $100 million budget.
While The Marsh King’s Daughter didn’t get a release as wide as all the other movies on the chart (the top 3 titles all played in more than 3,000 theaters), the other new releases that charted played in a similar number of houses. They also all had the benefit of the Dune: Part Two release being pushed back from that same weekend amid the ongoing actors strike. It remains to be seen if Ridley can lead a movie that’s unattached to a larger franchise, but for the time being this title does not seem to be breaking the mold.
