DiCaprio’s Box Office Flop ‘One Battle After Another’ Rushes to HBO Max

The hype around One Battle After Another fizzled out faster than Warner Bros. expected. Once touted as a prestige drama and a likely awards powerhouse, it quickly became another box office casualty. The film barely connected with audiences outside the Hollywood bubble, leaving some to wonder if anyone besides entertainment journalists ever actually liked it. It also plays like something dreamed up in a world where they would be cooing President Harris, a liberal fantasy projected onto a weary audience that didn’t buy it.

Warner Bros. already has a plan to make back what it can. The movie will be released digitally on November 20 and hit physical shelves on January 20, 2026, with versions for 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD. That’s typical timing for a film that underperforms but still hopes to get a second wind during awards season. A streaming debut on HBO Max is expected in mid-December, most likely December 12 based on the studio’s usual 77-day release gap.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson continues building his reputation as Hollywood’s most praised auteur who can’t turn critical acclaim into ticket sales. He has racked up 11 Oscar nominations over the years yet has never won one. The studio seems convinced One Battle After Another could change that. Its release calendar is perfectly timed to match the Golden Globes on January 11 and the Oscars on March 15. However, even a strong campaign may not overcome the problem that audiences already moved on.

Leonardo DiCaprio headlines the film as a father and former revolutionary fleeing a corrupt military officer, played by Sean Penn. Newcomer Chase Infiniti plays his daughter, and critics have praised her debut performance. Supporting players include Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor as fellow revolutionaries, each acting out different shades of resistance the way only Hollywood scriptwriters imagine it—complete with a white supremacist villain leading a secret cabal, because subtlety would apparently ruin the message.

The film’s central theme of battling systemic oppression feels less like storytelling and more like a lecture stretched into a two-and-a-half-hour art project. The characters speak in slogans, the villains are caricatures, and the script seems convinced it’s saying something profound. What it actually says is that the industry is still trapped in 2020, making movies that chase applause from social media instead of audiences in theaters. You just know they thought Kamala would be Madame President by now.

When One Battle After Another hits HBO Max this winter, it will find its safest audience: the same critics and activists who already celebrated it. For everyone else, it will look like what it is a lavish exercise in wishful thinking from a Hollywood that still doesn’t understand why people stopped showing up for lectures disguised as films. The box office didn’t lie. This wasn’t a misunderstood masterpiece. It was a political sermon that never stood a chance.

***