Klara and the Sun Box Office: Jenna Ortega, Taika Waititi’s Film Opens to Just $725,000 in 880 Theatres

Jenna Ortega is one of Hollywood’s most recognisable young stars, thanks to Wednesday, Scream and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Her latest film, however, has just posted one of the weakest wide openings of her career. Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, released in North American theatres on October 23, earned approximately $725,000 across 880 domestic theatres during its opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo, placing 14th overall and failing to crack the weekend’s top 10.

The numbers behind the debut are stark. The $725,000 opening translates to an average of just $823 per theatre, for a production with a reported $20 million budget. It marks the lowest opening average for a Jenna Ortega-led wide release and a new low for director Taika Waititi. The result fell far below early industry expectations: before release, Boxoffice Pro had projected a domestic opening between $6 million and $10 million, a range the film missed by a substantial margin.

Sony Pictures had already scaled back the film’s theatrical rollout, limiting it to fewer than 1,000 locations after a quiet promotional campaign and an unfavourable early critical reception. As of writing, the film holds a 24% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers taking issue with Waititi’s more comedic handling of the novel’s deeper themes. The film adapts Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel about Klara, an “Artificial Friend” android who believes the sun is a god-like figure. Played by Ortega, Klara is purchased as a companion for Josie, a sick teenager played by Mia Tharia, and forms a close relationship with her complicated family. Amy Adams plays Josie’s mother Chrissie, Natasha Lyonne plays the store manager who sells the androids, and Steve Buscemi also stars.

The weekend around it shows what audiences did choose instead. DC Studios’ Clayface led the North American chart with an estimated $24 million, A24’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything took $19.5 million in second place, and Laika’s stop-motion feature Wildwood opened third with $11.6 million — all figures trade estimates. Klara and the Sun, by contrast, could not convert Ortega’s enormous social-media and streaming following into ticket sales.

Here is the Filmverse take: Klara and the Sun is a lesson in the limits of star power. Ortega’s Wednesday fame is real, but it is platform fame — audiences know her from a streaming series they watch at home, not from a habit of buying cinema tickets for her name alone. Add a muted marketing campaign, mixed reviews and a reduced theatre count, and even a beloved novel and an Oscar-winning director could not create urgency. The film may yet find its audience on streaming, where its gentle, melancholy story arguably belongs — but as a theatrical proposition, it shows that in 2026, a famous face without a franchise or a hook is no longer enough to open a film.

Read our coverage of this weekend’s other big box-office story, DC’s Clayface, here: https://filmverse.in/clayface-box-office-24-million-opening-dc-tom-rhys-harries/

Watch the official trailer here:

All box-office figures are trade estimates. Sources: MovieWeb via Box Office Mojo, Hypebeast