Ridley Scott’s ‘The Dog Stars’ Just Posted a Brutal Preview Number That Has Hollywood Worried

Late August has never been the friendliest window for big-budget theatrical releases, but few films illustrate that risk quite as starkly as Ridley Scott’s latest project. Expectations were already shaky heading into release weekend, and now the numbers are starting to tell an uncomfortable story.

‘The Dog Stars,’ Scott’s post-apocalyptic drama adapted from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, arrived in theaters this week carrying the kind of pedigree that usually guarantees at least a respectable opening. Between Scott’s directing pedigree and a cast led by Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin, the film seemed positioned to draw at least moderate turnout.

That’s not quite how Thursday night played out. ‘The Dog Stars’ brought in just $850,000 in previews, a strikingly soft number for a film reportedly carrying a $110 million production budget before marketing costs.

For context, that preview haul places the film well behind comparable genre releases from recent years, with one cited industry benchmark pulling in roughly $2 million in previews en route to a $14.8 million opening weekend. Based on Thursday’s numbers, some industry trackers are now projecting an opening weekend in the single digits, with estimates hovering in the $8 million to $9 million range.

The film’s critical reception hasn’t helped matters either. ‘The Dog Stars’ currently sits at a 39 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, a discouraging figure for a film needing strong word of mouth to offset its hefty budget and late-summer release date.

The story follows Hig, a former civilian pilot played by Elordi, living at an abandoned airfield years after a flu pandemic has emptied most of the world. Brolin plays Bangley, a former Marine sharing the space with him under an uneasy arrangement built more on mutual defense than genuine friendship, while Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, Allison Janney, and Benedict Wong round out the supporting cast.

Earlier box office projections had been considerably more optimistic, with some outlets initially estimating a domestic opening in the $18 million to $23 million range. That outlook has steadily eroded in the weeks leading up to release, as tracking data continued trending in the wrong direction.

The scale of the film’s budget is what makes these numbers particularly concerning. At $110 million before marketing, ‘The Dog Stars’ effectively needs blockbuster-level returns just to break even, a bar this kind of adult-skewing post-apocalyptic drama rarely clears domestically.

To have any real shot at profitability, the film will likely need significant support from international markets, on top of unusually strong domestic holds in the weeks ahead. Whether audiences respond enough to make that happen remains an open question heading into the weekend’s full tally.

For Scott, now 88 and still remarkably active behind the camera, this marks another challenging box office outing following mixed results on recent projects like ‘Napoleon’ and ‘Gladiator II.’ Still, the veteran filmmaker shows no signs of slowing down, with his next high-budget epic, ‘Treasure Island,’ already moving through pre-production.

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