Robbie Williams’ new biopic Better Man has endured a difficult opening weekend in US cinemas.
The semi-autobiographical film, which sees the star represented by a CGI chimpanzee, tells the story of his life and career, from the early days of childhood to his first taste of success with boyband Take That.
Better Man was released in the UK on December 26, while in the US it expanded into over 1200 cinemas on January 10. As reported by Variety, that opening day saw the film draw only $580,000 (£475,000), which will be seen as a significant disappointment.
The film, which is directed by The Greatest Showman’s Michael Gracey, was made for a reported budget of $110million (£90million), and has made a total of £3.8million from its first two weekends in UK cinemas, according to the Film Distributors’ Association.
In a three-star review of the film, NME wrote: “Better Man begins like a John Lewis ad and swerves into an R-rated hodgepodge that somehow does too much while also barely skimming the surface of Robbie Williams’ career. This is ‘Rudebox’ on film: some of it good, some of it very bad, all of it a bit of a mess. Still, the monkey musical is a big swing that no one else would have taken. You can’t fault the chutzpah or the ambition. If it makes back its reported budget, we’ll eat $110m worth of bananas.”
The film also includes the new track ‘Forbidden Road’, although the song was recently disqualified from the shortlist for Best Original Song at the Oscars as it includes “material from an existing song that was not written” for the film. It includes an excerpt from ‘I Got A Name’ by Jim Croce, which was written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel.
“Listen, the rules is the rules and you have to go by them,” Williams said in reaction to the news. “It would have been nice, but also as an introvert, it’s another party I don’t have to go to. I went through it, I’m on the other side. It’s all good.”
Speaking to NME about the film, Williams reflected on seeing his life story depicted on film: “Tears. And triggering. And grief. And healing. And ego. And: ‘Look at what’s happened to me!’. It just depends on which version of me turns up for the screening on that particular day – and how much sleep I’ve had.
“At the minute, I just wanna take all of this in. I wanna drink every moment that I can, because I’m now in a place where I can derive joy from life. I couldn’t derive any joy from life for such a long time. And I feel as though I’m getting lucky again and I’m getting another bite of the apple.”
In other Robbie Williams news, the singer recently revealed to NME that he is working on a new album, which will include collaborations with Glenn Hughes and Black Sabbath‘s Tony Iommi.
Speculation about a new Robbie Williams album has been going on for some time now, with the artist telling fans back in September that a new record was on the way. When the new album arrives, it’ll mark his 13th as a solo artist and his first full-length album since 2019’s ‘The Christmas Present’.