Paramount Pictures defends Mother! after terrible opening

  • 19/09/2017

Paramount Pictures is standing by its film Mother (stylised as mother!) after it opened to a tiny box office haul and terrible audience reviews, saying the company doesn't want all of its films to be "safe".

The trippy, shocking psychological thriller from filmmaker Darren Aronofsky pulled in just US$7.5 million at the North American box office on opening weekend and was dealt an abysmal F CinemaScore - only the 12th movie ever to get one.

In New Zealand, mother! scored $60,000 on opening weekend - the sixth highest-grossing film, with It in the top spot pulling in more than $650,000 even though it'd already been out for a week.

But Paramount says it's happy to have produced a work of art that is proving polarising.

"This movie is very audacious and brave," the company's worldwide president of marketing and distribution Megan Colligan said in a statement.

"You are talking about a director at the top of his game, and an actress at the top her game. They made a movie that was intended to be bold. Everyone wants original filmmaking, and everyone celebrates Netflix when they tell a story no one else wants to tell. This is our version. We don't want all movies to be safe. And it's okay if some people don't like it."

Despite the poor audience reaction to mother!, it has fared better with reviews - landing a 74 rating on Metacritic and 68 at Rotten Tomatoes.

mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Newshub.