Taika Waititi used an Instagram post over Halloween weekend to call critics of Klara and the Sun sad lost souls,
days after the film opened to $701,000 (£523,000) in North America. The Oscar-winning director’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel holds a 26% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
What Waititi wrote on Instagram
Waititi posted on Saturday, according to Entertainment Weekly, sharing an image that contrasted the film’s critic and audience scores. Slant Magazine places the post on Halloween, eight days after Sony opened the film.
He wrote: I haven’t read a review of anything aimed at me or my peers in almost 15 years. But I do listen to the people.
He continued: This Halloween, let’s spare a thought for those sad lost souls who couldn’t achieve their dreams of becoming artists, and thus settled, and became critics.
He closed with Irrelevant. Out of touch. Obsolete. In the bin.
, as The Guardian reported.
The box-office figures behind the post
The film opened on Oct. 23. The Guardian reports it took $701,000 from 880 venues, just under $800 (£596) per theatre, and finished 16th. A per-theatre average is the gross divided by the number of venues. Deadline and other outlets give $701K or $701,059; Yahoo says $720,000 and Slate $725,000. The Guardian puts the reported cost at $44m (£32.8m). Fandom Pulse says $20 million, and Cosmic Book News, citing Deadline, says the net cost was in the high $20 millions
before marketing.
| Measure | Figure (The Guardian) |
|---|---|
| North American opening weekend | $701,000 (£523,000) from 880 venues |
| North American second weekend | $145,000 (£108,000), down 79% |
| UK opening weekend | £176,000 from 368 venues, average £477 |
The Guardian set those against Wicker, which opened to $5.7m from 1471 venues at $3,906 per cinema, and the documentary You Can See Everything, which took $18.7m in its second weekend for a $63.8m total.
Critics and audiences disagree sharply on film quality
Rotten Tomatoes lists critics and audiences separately. The critics’ score is 26%, from 90 reviews per The Guardian. The audience score is 74% in The Guardian and 78% in The Independent and Yahoo, a gap that may reflect when each outlet checked.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian’s chief critic, gave one star and called the film unbearably mannered
and unspeakably acted
. Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent’s chief film critic, gave two stars. The Guardian also quotes Wendy Ide of the Observer and Tim Grierson of the LA Times, both negative.
Sony cut the rollout to 880 venues. Fandom Pulse puts the original footprint at roughly 1,900 screens, Slant at more than 2,000 and Cosmic Book News at nearly 2,000. Deadline says worldwide marketing was significantly less than $30M.
Jojo Rabbit’s record against his claim
Waititi said the same critics also hated Jojo Rabbit.
According to The Independent, the film drew some questions back then over its use of humour and satire to take on Nazism, yet it was generally well received, earning an 81 per cent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for Waititi. Deadline reports a $93M global gross. Bradshaw did review it negatively, The Guardian notes, and Slant says it too dissented on both films.
A release that shrank before the reviews landed
Deadline says Sony scaled back the film’s limited theatrical footprint to 880 locations.
Deadline reports that a source close to the testing called the original ending a bummer
and said it was more faithful to Ishiguro’s novel, and that Waititi teamed up with 3000 Pictures producer Elizabeth Gabler on reshoots with Jenna Ortega in April 2025 that shifted it to a significantly more positive place
.
How other outlets answered him
Slant noted the people Waititi says he listens to have hardly turned out either.
The A.V. Club wrote that a director attacking the critical establishment as a whole is rare, while calling it the age-old brushfire war breaking out again. It quoted its reviewer Jesse Hassenger, who cited undercooked social satire, adrift performers, and Waititi's tendency to resort to smarmy caricature.
Hobby Consolas reports the planned Spanish release was cancelled. Cosmic Book News says Sony films go to Netflix after theatres. The sources give no final loss for the film.
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