Robbie Williams Monkey Biopic Bombs at Box Office

Pardon the blunt headline but how else do you tell your readers about Better Man, the Robbie Williams biopic that features the star as a CGI monkey going straight up Flop City at the American box office?

Directed by Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), the film tells the life story of pop singer Robbie Williams, beginning with his life as a young chav growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, to his highs and lows as the singular bad boy entrenched in the ‘90s boy band Take That, and then onto his highs and somehow even lower lows as a solo artist. Also, he’s played by a CGI monkey. Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, but Americans just can’t bring themselves to watch this film. Released on December 25, 2024, Better Man has grossed around $10 million at the box office on a $100 million plus budget. For the record, this is not good. You might even say it’s very bad.

Films shouldn’t be tied to their box office performance, and the overwhelming gamification of the film industry is a cancer that’s taken over the American film-going public since the 2010s, but it’s hard not to look at the failure of Better Man as a huge misstep on the part of - checks notes - every above the line person who worked on this film.

Going into this article, we were under the impression that Better Man hadn’t yet been released in the UK, but hoo boy we were wrong. Let’s blame it on fire brain (or maybe, “smoke inhalation brain” is the better phrase). Released on December 27 in the UK, the film has made a paltry $8 million and change at the domestic box office. This is a brutal bodying of a movie that should have been a hit in England and the parts of Europe and Australia where Williams is a massive star. No offense to Mr. Williams but he never managed to crack America even though he’s clearly an intelligent, funny, and handsome fellow who would have fit right in with the Paris Hiltons of the world in the early 2000s.

So what went wrong? We have to blame the monkey. As interesting of a choice as this is, it’s clear that no one wants to pay money to see a CGI chimp onscreen. It’s a shame. Really, it is. The last thing we need right now is another straight down the middle biopic about a musician. The viewing public knows the rise, fall, and rise of the pop star so well that it was perfectly skewered in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Unfortunately, it looks like movie-goers across the world are anemic to interesting ideas, no matter how straight forward the story is. Hopefully Better Man finds a cult audience on streaming. Until then, the film going public can enjoy Timothée Chalamet’s very normal and human performance in A Complete Unknown.