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Spielberg’s ‘The Post’ Performs Well At Box Office

By Anthony Carranza
Published on: 17:15 PST, Jan 20, 2018

Steven Spielberg’s movie The Post expanded nationwide and performed well for a second consecutive weekend. Spielberg’s latest movie production generated $14 million at the box office over the weekend and increased its domestic sales in the U.S. to $47 million.

The movie started out as a limited release, and since that time it has racked up sales in theaters. According to Box Office Mojo, The Post will earn a second-place finish behind Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

As stated by Forbes, the movie centered around the Pentagon Papers is on track to exceed the budget of the film. The movie was budgeted at $50 million.

“The $50m-budgeted 20th Century Fox release earned a solid $22.2 million over the long holiday, including $18.6m over the Fri-Sun frame. That gives the film a $26m domestic total and a nice headstart should it parlay the buzz into Oscar nominations.”

The Post is set in the early 1970s and features an epic battle between journalism outlets and the U.S. government; in essence, it portrayed how the New York Times and the Washington Post published Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War and how everything unraveled back then.

Elsewhere, the movie confronted an initial ban abroad that was later lifted. A Variety report explains that the Lebanese censorship board recommended the movie be banned. Also, it cited a “boycott Israel” list that included Spielberg’s 1993 Holocaust film Schindler’s List.

“We are glad and pleased that justice, reason, and love of cinema has prevailed,” a spokesman for Italia Films, the movie’s Middle East distributor, said. He proceeded to express his gratitude to “‘everyone involved in the strong, united large popular support movement,’ including press, bloggers, and other opinion-makers who rallied in support of The Post after news of the ban broke,” wrote Variety.

Some critics see parallels between the journalistic issues presented in the film and the current state of White House coverage in the age of Trump. An op-ed for the News & Observer calls the film “timely.”

“But cheer we must, for the familiar old devices of ‘hot type,’ the linotype machines and other apparatuses we senior journalists so fondly remember, are inspiring. The movie dramatizes a mortal collision between the Nixon regime and two great newspapers who deemed it their duty to monitor national policies and thus to serve the sovereign people rather than the temporary occupants of the White House,” wrote the News & Observer in their analysis of The Post.

The movie is expected to get nominated for multiple Oscars under the categories Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay.

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