Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars opened to 19.3 million dollars worldwide, the weekend The Odyssey crossed 1.5 billion
New box office figures for Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars make grim reading — and you won’t like what that means for Disney.
Well, there goes the neighbourhood for Ridley Scott’s latest, The Dog Stars. If you were hoping for some late-summer fireworks for Disney’s 2026 release slate, you’ll have to look elsewhere, because this one’s been a right old washout at the cinema.
The Dog Stars took in just $19.3 million worldwide during its opening weekend.
A Brutal Box Office Debut
So, let’s break down the carnage. Over its debut weekend, The Dog Stars managed only $8 million in the US. Want some international help? Not really: it scraped together $11.3 million more from everywhere else, for a total global launch of—wait for it—$19.3 million. And that’s with a reported budget somewhere between $70 million (optimists, presumably) and $110 million (realists, I’d say). Any way you cut it, those numbers scream ‘financial bloodbath’ for Disney and 20th Century Studios.
This isn’t exactly Scott’s first stumble, either. If it all feels a little familiar, that might be because his 2021 period epic The Last Duel limped to only $4.7 million on its opening weekend. Not much luck turning box office poison into gold here.
What’s the Film About?
For anyone wondering what you’re actually not seeing, Jacob Elordi leads as Hig, a pilot trying to keep himself (and, presumably, his dog) alive amongst the post-apocalyptic ruins of Colorado. Supporting him—you can’t say they didn’t splash out on the cast—are Josh Brolin and Margaret Qualley, all working off an adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel.
Read more: The Odyssey just did something at the box office we haven’t seen in 17 years
Even with all that going, the film seems destined to lose tens of millions while it limps through cinemas.
Critics and Competition
If Scott was hoping critical buzz might help prop things up, no luck there either. Reviews have been lukewarm at best: The Dog Stars holds just a 40% ‘rotten’ score on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 158 critics), and a Metacritic number of 49, which is about as exciting as room-temperature soup. At least audiences have been slightly less cruel, tossing it a 70% viewer score—better, but hardly the stuff of sleeper hits.
And it’s not as though these poor numbers exist in a vacuum. Suddenly, the rest of the box office is lively: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (that’s still going, somehow) stacked up another $14.3 million in its sixth weekend, and just cruised over the $1.5 billion global mark. Even Coyote vs. Acme—not exactly a sure thing—nabbed $15.9 million. And if that’s not enough, the indie horror comedy Buddy overperformed with $5.3 million, nicking away some R-rated eyeballs for itself.
Disney’s Rough Patch
It’s the latest headache for Disney, who’ve had a patchy run. Sure, Toy Story 5 hit a massive $1.12 billion, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 surprised everyone with $692 million. But misses like the live-action Moana and the Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian and Grogu haven’t helped the average. For The Dog Stars, things haven’t picked up since opening weekend—it’s crawled to $13.7 million domestic and $33 million worldwide after 11 days, so don’t expect it to magically turn a profit down the line.