Margot Robbie On ‘Babylon’ Flopping At Box Office: “I Still Can’t Figure Out Why People Hated It”

Margot Robbie is still perplexed why Babylon didn’t get a good reception from moviegoers.

Damien Chazelle’s 2022 film also starred Brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li. With an estimated budget of $80 million, the Paramount Pictures film only made $15 million at the domestic box office and a total of $63 million worldwide.

“I don’t get it either. I know I am biased because I am very close to the project and I obviously believe in it, but I still can’t figure out why people hated it,” Robbie said on The Talking Pictures podcast. “I wonder if in 20 years people are going to be like, ‘Wait, Babylon didn’t do well at the time?’ Like when you hear that Shawshank Redemption was a failure at the time and you’re like like, ‘How is that possible?’”

Babylon took place in Hollywood, following multiple characters during the transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s.

Despite not being a box office winner, Robbie recalled having a good time working with the director.

“Damian is so thorough,” the Barbie star said. “Do you know what I loved so much about working with him? I felt like no one had really put their foot to the floor with the gas, but he wanted that all the time. He wanted more always. Even when we were prepping.”

Robbie’s sentiment that with time, people could appreciate Babylon is something that director Hideo Kojima said about Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, which also didn’t fare well at the box office.

“Over the next 10 or 20 years, this film’s reputation will likely change along with the permeation of hero movies to come,” Kojima said in a post on X, the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter. “It may take some time for it to become a true ‘folie à deux.'”