Sony has pulled the Spanish theatrical release of Klara and the Sun, the Jenna Ortega-led sci-fi drama that was set to open in Spain today. The cancellation follows a disastrous opening in the United States and a wave of negative reviews that has left the studio cutting its losses on a film once aimed at awards season.
Spanish publication Hobby Consolas reported that Sony scrapped the release because of the film's largely negative critical reception and very low commercial expectations in the region, with the studio hoping to "minimize losses." Sony has announced no replacement date for Spain. The studio has also not said whether the film will reach Spanish audiences through streaming instead.
The warning signs were already visible in the United States, where Sony cut the film's rollout from a planned 1,900 theaters to roughly 880 before opening weekend. The smaller release did not help: Klara and the Sun earned about $701,000 in its first weekend, an average of roughly $797 per theater. Its worldwide total has since climbed to only about $1.64 million.
The film's troubles began at its world premiere at the 70th BFI London Film Festival, where critics met it with largely negative reviews. It has since settled at 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. Few fall releases arrived with higher expectations, which has made the collapse harder to soften.
On paper, the pedigree was formidable: the film adapts the 2021 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner whose rights 3000 Pictures acquired in 2020. Taika Waititi directed and co-wrote the film with Dahvi Waller, and the cast pairs Ortega with Amy Adams, Mia Tharia, Aran Murphy and Natasha Lyonne. Producers include David Heyman, Garrett Basch and Waititi.
The road to release was troubled behind the scenes as well. The film was delayed by roughly a year, and Simon Baker's scenes as the family's father were removed entirely during post-production. Its budget, reported at around $20 million and shared between Sony and Spyglass, keeps the failure from reaching blockbuster scale, but it does not rescue the rollout.
Ortega plays Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend purchased for Josie, a lonely and unwell young girl living on a wheat farm. Adams plays Josie's mother, and the story follows Klara as she learns about the world and bonds with the family that bought her. The film runs 116 minutes.
Klara and the Sun opened in US theaters on October 23, where it continues in its reduced run. Whether Spanish audiences will see it in cinemas at all is now an open question Sony has yet to answer.
