‘How to Rob a Bank’ Puts Imagine’s Theatrical Return to the Test

By Marcus Bennett

Amazon MGM Studios’ How to Rob a Bank is tracking poorly and now looks unlikely to crack $10 million in its domestic debut, according to the source report. The David Leitch film will play 2,810 theaters and carries a $40 million production budget.

The report says How to Rob a Bank has drawn career-low reviews for Leitch and faces intense Thanksgiving-season competition. Imagine Entertainment co-produced the film with Leitch’s 87North.

A weak debut would extend Imagine’s run of theatrical setbacks. Its October release Whalefall, a survival thriller about a scuba diver trapped inside a marine mammal, earned $39 million worldwide. The report calls How to Rob a Bank a potential second non-starter and frames the pair as Imagine’s first test of its return to wide release.

Amazon fronted the budget and marketing spend for How to Rob a Bank, while Disney did the same for Whalefall.

A wide-release return after eight years

The report says How to Rob a Bank and Whalefall are Imagine’s first features to play across more than 2,000 domestic screens in more than eight years. The last was Lionsgate’s 2018 buddy comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me.

Founded by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, Imagine asserted itself with Kindergarten Cop, Liar, Liar, The Nutty Professor, and Howard’s Apollo 13 and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. An Imagine spokesperson declined to comment for the report.

Why Imagine stepped back from original features

The report says Imagine’s focus on original, often adult-oriented programming produced diminishing returns over the past 20 years. Its biggest hit after 2010 was the 2016 Dan Brown adaptation Inferno, which grossed $220 million worldwide. That was less than half the global gross of its 2009 predecessor, Angels & Demons.

Around that time, Imagine moved toward streaming and television, expanded into documentaries, and sold narrative packages including Tick, Tick… Boom! and The Beanie Bubble to streaming services.

The report describes an industrywide reawakening to theatrical’s benefits, even drawing in Netflix, alongside waning demand for unscripted programming. It places Imagine at the start of a return to wide-release, big-screen features.

False starts complicated the comeback

The report identifies Howard’s own 2022 rescue thriller Thirteen Lives as a false start, first set up at MGM before Amazon acquired the studio. Amazon then gave the film an extremely limited theatrical release and opted out of reporting box office; actor Viggo Mortensen later slammed the decision.

Another Howard thriller, the island-set Eden, sold to the mostly digital-focused distributor Vertical after withering reviews. It carried a $35 million net budget.

Luca Guadagnino’s post-#MeToo morality thriller After the Hunt never cracked 1,300 theaters from Amazon MGM after critics ripped it apart at the Venice Film Festival. It cost $80 million to produce.

What does this change for Imagine’s theatrical business?

The practical answer is that a weak How to Rob a Bank debut would leave more weight on Imagine’s established intellectual-property strategy for 2027, the report says. The report calls How to Rob a Bank and Whalefall the first test of whether Imagine can reassert itself as a theatrical hitmaker.

• The report sets Spaceballs: The New One, another Amazon MGM release, for April 2027 as a legacy sequel comedy. It says Imagine will look to the film if How to Rob a Bank underperforms.
• The report also says Universal is distributing a Snoop Dogg biopic developed by Imagine with the rapper’s own Death Row Pictures. It frames the project as a test of whether Imagine can repeat its success with 8 Mile.
• The report presents Alone at Dawn as the more original project, an Adam Driver military thriller directed by Howard. It was shot in 2025 and is slated for a Christmas 2027 theatrical release from Amazon MGM.
• The report says Imagine is also developing a sequel to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with Jim Carrey tapped to return. The 2000 original was the top-grossing North American release of its year and remains a commercial high point for Imagine.

Ownership questions cloud the revival

The report links takeover interest to Imagine’s rise in documentary production. Variety reported a 2021 valuation of around $800 million. TheWrap reported in 2022 that a $700 million valuation deal with Centricus Asset Management Ltd. had fallen through.

On October 1, TheWrap reported that majority stakeholder The Raine Group, which came aboard for $100 million in 2016, was in talks to sell its 51 percent ownership to private equity. Imagine issued an emphatic denial of that claim.

The report places Imagine within an independent-production sector that boomed at the start of the decade, then faced shrinking valuations and sharp cuts in content spending.

The next checkpoints are Spaceballs: The New One in April 2027 and Alone at Dawn at Christmas 2027. If those releases fail to restore a theatrical hit, Imagine’s return will resemble Mel Brooks’ 1987 joke: “The Search for More Money.”