Damien Chazelle’s epic tribute to the debaucherous pre-Hays Code Hollywood is nearly upon us. Babylon hits theaters a couple of days before Christmas, on December 23rd. That puts its release just one week after that of another epic Hollywood movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, which is set to hit theaters this December 16th. Both movies have incredibly long runtimes for theatrical films, with Babylon at 3 hours and 8 min and The Way of Water at 3 hours and 10 min. But only one of these Hollywood epics will dominate the box office.

Babylon boasts a healthy cast with Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Tobey Maguire, Olivia Wilde, Katherine Waterston, and some of the best character actors in the business in supporting roles. With all of its star power in the mix, does Babylon have a chance at beating out The Way of Water in its second weekend at the box office? Probably not.

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After star-studded non-franchise films like Jungle Cruise (2021), The Last Duel (2021), and Amsterdam (2022) have bombed with pandemic-era audiences, Babylon will more than likely drown in the box office wake of The Way of Water. The Avatar sequel is on track to double the opening box office of the original Avatar.

Babylon Looks Like Another Star-Studded Romp

     Paramount Pictures

Babylon is poised to be the exciting next step in Chazelle’s rise as the wunderkind writer-director of Whiplash (2014), La La Land (2016), and First Man (2018). Great as these films are, the marketing campaign for Babylon would have you believe that the film is the spiritual successor to films by Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, like The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) with shades of The Aviator (2004) thrown in.

It feels like Leonardo DiCaprio should be in Babylon. Even though DiCaprio is not in the film, his real-life buddy Tobey Maguire is. And if the Babylon official trailer is any indication, Maguire’s supporting role looks like a riot. This comes on the heels of Maguire’s surprise return as Peter Parker from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007) in the MCU’s Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), which muddied the line between a cameo appearance and a supporting role. It looks as though Maguire has ridden his Spidey return from last year’s first pandemic blockbuster into something of a career comeback.

Babylon Has a Lot in Common With Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

     Sony Pictures Releasing

In July 2019, Damien Chazelle announced his plans to direct Babylon from his own original screenplay. This was the same month that Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was released theatrically. The coincidences don’t stop there.

Both Babylon and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood star Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie (though Emma Stone was initially attached to Robbie’s Babylon role) playing characters working in the film industry. These characters run the gamut from fictional to nonfictional as Robbie played real-life actress Sharon Tate in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, while Brad Pitt’s Babylon character is loosely inspired by real-life actor-director John Gilbert.

Both movies are set during major shifts in the history of motion picture filmmaking. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is set in the late 1960s during the transition from the Golden Age of Hollywood to The New Hollywood. Meanwhile, Babylon is set in the late 1920s during the transition from silent films to sound films or “talkies.”

Will Babylon Make as Much as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?

Tarantino’s Hollywood film grossed $337 million off a hefty budget of $96 million. Chazelle’s Hollywood film was made on a similarly hefty budget of $78 million. How will Babylon stack up to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood? It’s difficult to say for sure. Especially considering that Tarantino had a name like Leonardo DiCaprio on the poster of his film. And Al Pacino’s name couldn’t have hurt.

Then there’s another name that Tarantino had. His own. Tarantino has a net worth of $120 million, while Chazelle, a younger filmmaker despite his success, only nets $10 million.

On top of this, Tarantino never had to compete with an Avatar film. The closest he came was in 2009 with Inglourious Basterds. That film also starred Brad Pitt and grossed a similar amount to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, raking in $321 million off a budget of $70 million. However, Basterds was out of theaters months before the first Avatar (2009) shattered the holiday box office and took in over a billion dollars. And the movie market has changed a lot since 2009. It’s even changed a lot since 2019.

Movie Stars Have Failed to Draw Crowds in the Pandemic Era

     Walt Disney Studios

Last year, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson ripped off his own hit comedy adventure films Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2017) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2017) with Jungle Cruise (2021). With co-star Emily Blunt beside The Rock, Jungle Cruise grossed nearly $221 million from a budget of $200 million. That sounds like a modest profit, right? Not with marketing costs factored in. In the end, Jungle Cruise barely broke even. If a star like The Rock couldn’t draw audiences back to theaters at pre-pandemic numbers, who could?

Last year, Ridley Scott ripped off Akira Kurosawa’s groundbreaking classic Rashomon (1950) with his historical drama, The Last Duel (2021). Scott wasn’t alone in his homage to Kurosawa. The multiple-perspectives-of-the-same-rape screenplay for The Last Duel was written by Nicole Holofcener as well as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in their first time writing for the screen together since their 1997 breakout hit, Good Will Hunting.

But the Affleck-Damon reunion didn’t seem to do much for moviegoers of the pandemic era. The film went on to gross a little over $30 million against a budget of $100 million, putting its losses at over $70 million. Scott infamously blamed millennials being on their phones for The Last Duel’s failure at the box office. Speaking about The Last Duel on WTF with Marc Maron, Scott said:

It must not have occurred to Scott that The Last Duel’s financial losses might have something to do with its narrative risks and on-screen deception of assault.

After Amsterdam, Babylon Will Be the Ultimate Test of Hollywood Star Power

     20th Century Studios

This year, David O. Russell’s Amsterdam (2022) bombed so hard it made Jungle Cruise look like a hit. Headlines reveled in Amsterdam’s box office failure during its opening weekend. Not only did critics practically dance on the grave of David O. Russell’s career. They cited Amsterdam as further evidence of the inevitable dwindling of Hollywood star power. Just another marker of the fall of the movie star itself.

The financial fate of Babylon will be the latest and greatest test of Hollywood star power at the end of the pandemic era. Babylon, Amsterdam, The Last Duel, and even Jungle Cruise may one day be considered the last stand for movie stars.