The Animal Farm box office numbers are in—and they paint a bleak picture for Angel Studios’ latest release, which is already shaping up to be the studio’s most high-profile misfire.
Instead of building on its reputation as a faith-driven alternative to Hollywood, Angel Studios appears to have stumbled badly, embracing the Hollywood narrative, partnering with Hollywood progressive elitists, and delivering a film that’s failing both commercially and critically.
And for a studio that recently went after its own audience amid backlash, this result feels less like bad luck and more like the consequences of a fractured relationship with the very people who built its brand.
A Weak Opening That Signals Trouble
According to early reporting, Animal Farm opened to just over $1.1 million on its first day across roughly 2,600 theaters in North America. Projections for the opening weekend sit around $3.3 million—a modest figure that places the film outside the top five at the domestic box office.
For a wide theatrical release with a recognizable literary title and a marketed voice cast, these numbers suggest minimal audience interest. In a crowded marketplace, films that open this soft rarely recover, especially when word-of-mouth is working against them.
Critics and Audiences Aren’t Buying It
The critical response has been brutal. The film currently sits at a 25% score on Rotten Tomatoes, firmly in “rotten” territory.
And the audience side? It’s arguably worse.
The Rotten Tomatoes score for Animal Farm as of 5/3/26 at 12:57 p.m. EST – Rotten Tomatoes
So few people have seen the film that Rotten Tomatoes hasn’t even gathered enough verified audience reviews to generate a score after a full weekend. That’s near invisibility for a nationwide release.
Add in a reported C- CinemaScore, and the outlook becomes even more grim. That grade typically signals poor audience reception and weak legs at the box office in the weeks ahead.
A Message That Missed the Mark
Part of the backlash stems from what many viewers see as a fundamental misunderstanding—or outright reversal—of George Orwell’s original work.
A clip from Andy Serkis’s Animal Farm – YouTube, JoBlo Animated Videos
Animal Farm has long been recognized as a sharp critique of authoritarianism and communist regimes. But this adaptation appears to have taken a different route, reframing elements of the story in a way that critics and audiences alike have interpreted as skewing toward anti-capitalist messaging.
That shift hasn’t landed well.
For a studio like Angel Studios, which built its audience by positioning itself as an alternative to mainstream Hollywood storytelling, this kind of narrative pivot has created a disconnect. Instead of reinforcing its core audience’s expectations, the film has left many wondering who exactly it was made for.
Angel Studios vs. Its Own Audience
The situation becomes even more complicated when factoring in the studio’s recent messaging.
In the lead-up to release, Angel Studios pushed back against criticism by framing detractors as a “loud minority”—a line that echoes the same dismissive language often used by major Hollywood studios when facing fan backlash.
Ending of Angel Studios’ video about Animal Farm – X, @animalfarmfilm
That didn’t sit well with longtime supporters.
The studio’s marketing even leaned into a tone-deaf, theatrical framing of the controversy, portraying the relationship between the film and its audience as a kind of tragic misunderstanding. But audiences weren’t buying the metaphor—and now, they’re not buying tickets either.
A Failure on Every Front
Between the weak opening, poor critical reception, lack of audience engagement, and growing distrust among its core base, Animal Farm is shaping up to be a rare multi-front failure.
It’s not just that the film underperformed.
It’s that it failed to connect with anyone—critics rejected it, audiences ignored it, and the studio’s own supporters felt alienated in the process.
For Angel Studios, the bigger question now isn’t just what went wrong with Animal Farm. It’s whether the studio can rebuild the trust it may have just squandered.
Are you surprised by the disastrous Animal Farm box office? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
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