Last year, as his distribution deal with Amazon Studios fell apart, Woody Allen self-released the trailer for his then-latest film, a comedy called A Rainy Day in New York. At the time, the film lacked a distributor in the United States, likely as as result of Allen’s increasingly toxic public persona. October 2020 saw the film finally reach American theaters — at least those of them that were open — to find an audience.
As it turns out, that audience may not have been all that big. A new report at IndieWire notes that the film played in six theaters across the country, selling around 300 tickets total. That said, its global box office represents a step up from his previous film, Wonder Wheel — $22 million to date as compared to Wonder Wheel‘s $16 million.
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In recent years, Allen’s reputation has come under fire for both moral and aesthetic reasons. It doesn’t help matters that his latest film has received some of the worst reviews of his career. Writing at RogerEbert.com, Peter Sobczynski stated that “rarely has [Allen] come up with something as utterly inconsequential as this collection of rehashed themes, characters, and punchlines.”
In a comprehensive article at Vox, Alissa Wilkinson explored the film’s troubled history and illustrated the ways in which the country, the world and the film industry have all changed since it began shooting.
Wilkinson offers a particularly harsh critique of the film’s general irrelevance. She writes that Allen is “not canceled; he just doesn’t seem all that relevant anymore, or interested in saying anything to the world beyond rehashing his old material.” All of which may explain why Allen’s new film was greeted less by applause or outrage than by simple indifference.
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