Taika Waititi Calls Critics 'Sad Lost Souls' After Klara Flop

Taika Waititi has attacked film critics as "sad lost souls" after Klara and the Sun, his adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel, grossed just $701,000 (£523,000) on its first weekend at the North American box office.

The film cost a reported $44m (£32.8m) to make. It opened in 16th place from 880 venues, averaging just under $800 (£596) per theatre. Comparable titles performed far better: Wicker opened with $5.7m in North America from 1,471 venues, an average of $3,906 per cinema, while the Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything took $18.7m on its second weekend and has reached a cumulative total of $63.8m.

In a social media post, Waititi wrote: "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 added: "The same people who also hated Jojo Rabbit … Irrelevant. Out of touch. Obsolete. In the bin."

The director pointed to the gap between audience and critical reception on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. The film currently holds a 74% audience score against a 26% critics' score, drawn from 90 reviews. "I haven't read a review of anything aimed at me or my peers in almost 15 years," Waititi wrote. "But I do listen to the people."

How bad were the UK numbers?

The British figures mirrored the North American collapse. Klara and the Sun opened in the UK with £176,000 from 368 venues, an average of £477 per cinema.

Its second weekend in North America confirmed the steep decline. The film dropped 79% to $145,000 (£108,000) from a similar number of venues.

What did the critics actually say?

The Guardian's chief critic Peter Bradshaw gave the film one star, describing it as "unbearably mannered" and "unspeakably acted". He wrote: "[It] is soft-centred sci-fi-lite, simultaneously demanding we laugh at its (unfunny) humour and wipe away a tear at its pass-agg poignancy."

Bradshaw also reviewed Waititi's 2019 film Jojo Rabbit negatively, calling it "a terrible film … a pointless Hitler-spoofy YA adventure with a 12A certificate, obtusely accentuating little-kid cuteness and optimism amid the quaintly imagined non-horror."

Wendy Ide, writing in the Observer, called Klara and the Sun "a thin and cloying thing that strips away any profundity in the source material and replaces it with self-conscious quirkiness". The LA Times' Tim Grierson wrote: "[Waititi] lacquers the film with a calculated gooeyness that's stultifying before it becomes downright exasperating."

What does this change for Waititi?

The outburst reframes a commercial failure as a battle between artists and critics, a stance Waititi has now made explicit. With a $44m production grossing under $1m across two North American weekends, the film's theatrical run has effectively ended, and the director's next moves will be watched against the sharpest box-office data of his career.