Ron Howard is one of Hollywood’s most reliable directors. The guy gave us Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and even made Frost/Nixon gripping. But his latest film, Eden, isn’t riding into awards season glory. It limped into North American theaters with just a $1 million opening across 664 screens on a budget reportedly sitting at $55 million. That’s not a stumble. That’s a nosedive.
The road to release hasn’t been smooth. Eden premiered at TIFF nearly a year ago to lukewarm reception (Rotten Tomatoes sits at 55%). It floated around without distribution for months before Vertical picked it up, and then leaked online two months before release. By the time it finally hit theaters, the hype was dead on arrival.
Vertical gave the survival drama a 30-day theatrical exclusive before PVOD. Overseas, AGC raised about $26 million at Cannes to cover part of the cost, with Prime Video stepping in to take a big chunk of the foreign markets. Even with Australian tax credits trimming the budget down to a net $35 million, financiers are going to be sweating this one.
So why didn’t it land? On paper, Eden sounds like a hit. It’s based on the true story of European settlers who attempted to build a utopian community on Floreana in the Galápagos Islands after WWI. The cast is loaded with talent like Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, and Daniel Brühl. It plays like Lord of the Flies with a 1920s colonial twist. And yet, the film never had breakout potential at the box office. This feels like the type of mid-budget star-studded drama that would’ve quietly crushed it on Netflix.
Howard himself admitted he was nervous. At a Cinema Society screening in New York, the 71-year-old director called it a “big creative risk.” Most of his films have a celebratory tone, but this one is different. It’s a descent into jealousy, lust, and ambition. “It was a cautionary story, a true crime thriller that I felt proud to bring to life,” he explained.
What’s fascinating is how personal this film was to him. Howard first stumbled onto the story during a family holiday about fifteen years ago. He walked into a Galápagos museum, found a room dedicated to the settlers, and immediately started typing an outline on his BlackBerry that same night. That late-night inspiration turned into one of his riskiest films yet.
Still, audiences didn’t show up. Variety’s Brett Lang flat-out called it a bomb, while Deadline bent over backwards trying to argue otherwise. Audience scores (71%) are kinder than critics, but that’s not enough to keep it afloat theatrically.
For Howard, 2024 wasn’t all bad. He celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary, the 40th year of Imagine Entertainment with Brian Grazer, and even snagged an Emmy nomination. Unfortunately, Eden will be remembered as the one that got lost in the shuffle.
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