Killers of the Flower Moon: Apple's $215M Scorsese epic grossed $158M

Killers of the Flower Moon — Martin Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hour epic about the Osage murders, produced by Apple Studios and distributed theatrically by Paramount — cost an estimated $215 million, including about $40 million in COVID-related costs, per Variety. It premiered at Cannes in May 2023 and opened in the US on October 20.

It grossed $68.1 million in the United States and Canada and $90.7 million overseas, a worldwide total of $158.8 million — well short of its cost. In February 2024, Deadline reported the film fell about $20 million short of covering its marketing during the theatrical run, leaving a net loss for Apple roughly equal to its $200 million production budget.

Apple pushed back on the accounting: a studio source told Variety the film was profitable once streaming value and subscriptions were counted, and Apple TV+ cited it as a driver of new sign-ups. The tension is the point — a film can lose money at the box office and still be judged a win by a streamer that measures in subscribers.