Why is Clint Eastwood's “Juror No. 2” buried by Warner Bros.?

AFI Fest, the oldest film festival in Los Angeles, caps its 38th edition on Sunday evening with the world premiere of Clint Eastwood's “Juror #2” at the historic TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Stars Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette and Zoey Deutch will walk the red carpet, marking the fourth world premiere of an Eastwood-directed feature film at the festival. The courtroom drama is the filmmaker's 40th directorial effort – and given his age of 94, possibly his last.

Four days later, Warner Bros. will give “Juror #2” a slightly less distinguished treatment. The studio releases the feature According to two sources with knowledge of the film's distribution, the film will be released in a limited release of fewer than 50 theaters and there are currently no plans to expand to additional locations in the following weeks.

While exact location numbers are still being determined, Juror #2 currently lists showtimes at four locations in New York City, five in the Los Angeles area and one in Chicago a week after opening day. The film will be available for pre-sale at fewer than 25 locations in the country's 25 most populous cities. The film's official website only advertises showtimes in 18 markets. Cineplex, Canada's leading cinema chain, is showing the film in just one theater in Toronto and 160 venues across the country. While many indie films never expand beyond a handful of theaters, this is less common for releases from major Hollywood studios like Warner Bros. As things currently stand, “Juror #2” will play in far fewer theaters than other awards season releases like “Anora” and “The Brutalist,” which were made on smaller budgets but will eventually play across thousands of screens.

“'Juror #2' will be released in the US, UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany with the full support of Warner Bros.,” a studio spokesperson said. “The film will make its global debut at the AFI Film Festival this weekend.”

Sources tell diversity that Warner Bros. is considering not reporting box office returns for the film – an atypical practice for a traditional Hollywood studio, although not an unprecedented one. Earlier this year, Disney released Daisy Ridley's biographical sports drama “The Young Woman and the Sea” to an unknown number of theaters and declined to release box office results. Two weeks later, the film debuted on Disney+. The decision seemed bizarre to the few who noticed: a half-hearted release of a film that was originally commissioned as a streaming-exclusive release but arrived in theaters after intensive testing. Some noted that the release meant that The Young Woman and the Sea had met the Oscar requirements to be considered for an Oscar nomination, but that seems beside the point since the film did not receive the publicity push it needed , which would be necessary for a serious prize contender.

Similar, Juror #2 was originally intended as a streaming release, as first reported by Puck and confirmed by a source. After screening the film, which was produced on a budget of about $30 million, the studio moved to theaters. While next week's limited release will serve as a prize-qualifying run, Sources tell diversity that the film is not perceived internally at Warner Bros. as a major Oscar player. Notably, “Juror #2” is not featured on the Company’s fiscal year 2024 website. That's not entirely surprising, since Eastwood hasn't been an awards winner since American Sniper earned six Oscar nominations in 2015. Since then, only two awards have followed: sound editing for “Sully” in 2017 and Kathy Bates as supporting actress for “Richard Jewell” in 2020.

Still, the clandestine release of Juror #2 remains an odd approach for a filmmaker that still has commercial appeal. “American Sniper” was the highest-grossing domestic release of 2014. Two of Eastwood’s follow-ups, “Sully” and “The Mule,” each grossed more than $100 million in North America. But in the contemporary theater landscape, which has been severely shaken by the COVID pandemic, original adult-oriented dramas are being perceived by studios as much riskier theatrical ventures than they were even five years ago.

Warner Bros., the studio Eastwood has worked with for more than 50 years, appeared to reevaluate its relationship with the filmmaker following the 2021 release of his latest feature, “Cry Macho.” This western drama, which starred a 100-year-old Eastwood as a former rodeo star who finds redemption south of the border, was a box office flop, grossing $16.5 million worldwide against a production budget of $33 million. Dollar. The film faced significant challenges and opened in a cinema landscape that was still in the first months of recovery from the pandemic lockdowns. It also made a simultaneous streaming debut with a daytime release on Max (then titled HBO Max), as did the rest of Warner Bros.'s play that year.

The poor performance of the lukewarmly reviewed film “Cry Macho” reportedly became a point of contention at the studio as strategy changed following WarnerMedia's merger with Discovery, Inc. In May 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that then – just now – former CEO David Zaslav asked why “Cry Macho” was being made after the film's executives admitted they had doubts the film could make a profit. “It's not about show friends, it's show business,” the managing director was quoted as saying.

Still, Eastwood was back at Warner Bros. Goodbye until April 2023, when the studio greenlit “Juror #2,” led by Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, who were hired to head the WB film division the summer before . But now the studio seems to have little confidence in the film's commercial prospects. A source close to Warner Bros. says the decision to release “Juror #2” in theaters at all is a gesture of gratitude to Eastwood, who has brought the company billions in box office revenue as well as numerous awards for films like “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby.” But is a limited rollout in a few venues really an appropriate distribution plan for an industry icon that has stuck with one studio for decades?

In the current situation, this is apparently the best thing there is.