The Lie Hollywood Told About Willow's Box Office

And for thirty-five years, the entertainment press has called it a flop.

Where the "flop" story came from

The narrative was built from a single unfair comparison. The summer of 1988 was one of the most commercially dominant in Hollywood history, and George Lucas was being graded on a curve that set Star Wars as the passing mark. Anything that was not a cultural phenomenon was filed as a disappointment. Willow earned more than three times its production budget on its worldwide theatrical run. By any sensible standard, that is a success.

The specific event that cemented the failure story was the Memorial Day weekend. MGM, nervous about the competition, moved the film's release up from the Memorial Day slot to May 20, hoping to grab five days of open air. It worked briefly. Willow opened at number one. Then, on the Wednesday of Memorial Day weekend, two enormous pre-sold sequels opened simultaneously: Rambo III and Crocodile Dundee II. The film slid down the chart. The trade press reported the slide as a collapse.

There is a further irony that the flop narrative suppresses. Willow's domestic gross of $57.3 million was higher than Rambo III's domestic gross of $53.7 million. The film that supposedly buried Willow in the summer of 1988 earned less money domestically than the film it supposedly buried.

What Siskel and Ebert actually said

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert put Willow on their year-end worst-of-1988 television list. Their thumbs-down reviews called the film derivative, calling it the Star Wars formula run through a Tolkien filter. Lucas had anticipated this reaction precisely enough to put Ebert and Siskel into the film itself as the Eborsisk, the two-headed fire-breathing dragon that attacks the castle of Tir Asleen. Ebert reviewed the film, praised its special effects, and was apparently unaware he was watching himself.

The derivative charge — that the film was essentially Star Wars in a fantasy costume — was the review that stuck, and it was the review that the subsequent decades have most thoroughly discredited. Star Wars is a film about special bloodlines and chosen heroes. Willow is a film about a small farmer who has to learn to trust himself, and the central test — the finger test, in which the village's aspiring sorcerers are asked which finger holds the power and the correct answer is always your own — is a direct refusal of the Star Wars mysticism about inherited power. The films are arguing opposite things. The critics who missed this were the ones who stopped reading at the surface.

The home-video record

Before Willow had finished its theatrical run, RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video had paid a reported $15 million in advance for the home-video rights. That single figure nearly covered Lucasfilm's entire half of the production budget. The film arrived on VHS in November 1988, six months after theatrical release, timed for the holiday season. It sold steadily and then enormously, becoming one of the defining tapes of the early 1990s.

The children who found Willow on VHS were not reading Variety. They were watching a brave little father defeat a terrifying world with love and a card trick, and they had no interest in whether the summer of 1988 had preferred Rambo III.

The verdict those children delivered has now outlasted every critic who rendered the original one.

FAQ: Willow (1988) Box Office

Did Willow (1988) make money?

Yes. The film grossed $57.3 million domestically and more than $110 million worldwide against a $35 million production budget. Additional revenue from home video, television licensing, and merchandising made it a clear financial success for Lucasfilm.

Why is Willow called a flop?

The "flop" narrative came from the film sliding in the box-office rankings after a crowded Memorial Day weekend in 1988, and from critics who graded it against the impossible standard of Star Wars. By the arithmetic of its budget versus its worldwide earnings, the film was profitable.

Did Willow beat Rambo III at the box office?

Yes. Willow's domestic theatrical gross of $57.3 million exceeded Rambo III's domestic gross of approximately $53.7 million.

What did critics say about Willow in 1988?

Reviews were mixed to negative. Roger Ebert gave it two and a half stars. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert placed it on their year-end worst-of list, calling it derivative of Star Wars. Several critics, including Mike Clark of USA Today, recognized that children in the right age range would find it formative.

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