Margot Robbie has admitted that she was baffled by the failure of her film Babylon, which received mixed reviews and flopped at the box office.
The 34-year-old actress appeared Tuesday on the Talking Pictures podcast, where she talked about the 2022 Damien Chazelle Hollywood epic set in the 1920s that starred herself, Brad Pitt and Diego Calva.
“I love it,” Robbie said. “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.”
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The starlet suggested that in the future the movie may get a better reception, comparing it to Shawshank Redemption.
“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?’”
The movie, which received a 57% Rotten Tomatoes score, had a budget in the $80 million range, but flopped with sales at $63 million worldwide.
In the review by the New York Times at the time, the movie was referred to as “juiceless.”
“There isn’t much going on other than the spectacle of its busily spinning parts, which might be tolerable if the first two hours weren’t so unrelievedly unmodulated,” critic Manohla Dargis wrote in 2022. “After a while, it feels punishing.”
