To say that Abel Tesfaye — higher referred to as The Weeknd — sang out of key in his newest appearing outing is an understatement.
Hurry Up Tomorrow, a psychological thriller a few tormented pop star performed by Tesfaye, debuted to a mere $3.3 million domestically from 2,020 theaters over the Could 16-18 weekend to complete in sixth-place regardless of his standing as one in all music‘s best-selling superstars. Abroad, it likewise made roughly $3 million.
Heading into the weekend, the $15 million film was monitoring to open to $5 million to $9 million in North America. However withering critiques — its rating on Rotten Tomatoes was 14 % — mixed with deadly word-of-mouth torpedoed the title, which was financed by Stay Nation and distributed by Lionsgate as a companion piece to The Weeknd’s studio album of the identical time.
Many instances, a film that’s been dissed by critics can nonetheless win over on a regular basis moviegoers. Not on this case. Exit scores have been simply as dismal, together with one-and-a-half-stars out of 5 on exit polling service Comscore PostTrak and (ouch) a “C-” on CinemaScore.
Even Rotten Tomatoes’ viewers popcornmeter rating is just 68 percent regardless of Tesfaye’s tens of millions upon tens of millions of followers who’ve adopted his each victory — and there have been many — on the music aspect. They merely didn’t join with the movie, simply as they didn’t with showrunner Sam Levinson’s controversial The Idol, which was canceled by HBO after one season. Tesfaye developed that challenge with Levinson and likewise performed a musician, co-starring as a sketchy nightclub proprietor alongside Lily-Rose Depp.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow isn’t alone in being an unique 2025 launch that didn’t resonate with audiences. Becoming a member of Mickey 17, Final Breath, Novocaine and Black Bag, unique movies have usually had a really robust time connecting with audiences for whom if the idea or the advertising and marketing for no matter purpose doesn’t ring a bell, makes it very troublesome to make inroads on the field workplace,” says Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “In fact, Sinners was a really notable and apparent exception, however that movie had the advantage of having Michael B. Jordan working once more with Ryan Coogler plus stellar critiques throughout the board which made it resistant to the unique IP curse that’s befallen many a movie this yr.”
Many moviegoers are taking problem with Hurry Up Tomorrow for being little greater than a feature-length promotion for Tesfaye’s studio album of the identical title, which was launched in January amid the tragic L.A. fires and is billed as a goodbye to his moniker as The Weeknd.
“The amorphous narrative, which often veers into surrealism and suffers from a extreme case of symbolism, primarily considerations the existential angst being suffered by its star, reeling from a latest break-up with a girlfriend (voiced by Riley Keough),” wrote THR critic Frank Scheck.
By way of demos, Caucasians made up 39 % of moviegoers, adopted by Latinos (38 %), Black moviegoers (12 %), Asians (8 %) and Native American/Different (5 %).
Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan additionally star in Hurry Up Tomorrow, which was directed by Trey Edward Shults by a script he co-wrote with Tesfaye and Reza Fayhim that sees Tesfaye play a fictionalized model of himself, or relatively, a musician on the verge of a nervous breakdown after a breakup and practically dropping his voice (a storyline impressed by real-life occasions).
Lionsgate and the opposite companions concerned say Hurry Up provided a novel alternative to intersect the worlds of films and music. In distributing the movie, Lionsgate labored intently with The Weeknd’s companions at Republic Data, in addition to his XO label, Manic Part Productions, Stay Nation and CAA, simply to call just a few key gamers bridging the movie and the groups and connecting followers from his “After Hours Til Daybreak” Tour.
As Scheck notes in his evaluate, after Hurry Up Tomorrow and HBO’s short-lived The Idol, some profession counseling could be to ensure that Tesfaye.