The upcoming film Don't Worry Darling has received an incredibly low Rotten Tomatoes rating. The project, which is hitting theaters on September 23, is the sophomore feature from Booksmart director Olivia Wilde, who began her career as an actress in projects like TRON: Legacy and Cowboys and Aliens. Don't Worry Darling will follow a housewife (Black Widow star Florence Pugh) in the 1950s who moves with her husband (ex-One Directioner Harry Styles) into a bizarre company town that is a seemingly perfect suburban idyll, though she quickly discovers that not everything is as it seems. The cast also includes Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, and Star Trek's Chris Pine.
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Over the past month, the film has been at the center of a firestorm of drama and controversy. One of the most prominent is the fact that, while there are conflicting accounts as to the reason for this (including a pay disparity between the stars and conflict over Wilde and Styles' relationship, which began during the shooting of the film), Pugh will only be participating in minimal promotion for the film. More details of Wilde and Pugh's dynamic came to light during an Internet beef between Wilde and the film's original male lead Shia LaBeouf after a video message surfaced where Wilde called Pugh "Miss Flo" and implied there was friction between the two stars. The drama surrounding the film has spurred nonstop speculation, including people wondering if a video from Venice shows Styles spitting on Pine while taking his seat. In fact, the only viral moment that has anything to do with the actual quality of Don't Worry Darling is a clip that surfaced where fans were mocking Styles' American accent.
The score for Don't Worry Darling has been updated on Rotten Tomatoes following its premiere at Venice International Film Festival, and things are not looking good at the moment. Right now, it is standing at 44%, which is far below the 60% score required to be considered Fresh on the review aggregator. While the Critic's Consensus agrees that the cast and crew is flush with interesting people, it calls the film "a mostly muddled rehash of overly familiar themes."
It is important to note that this Rotten Tomatoes score will change as it gets closer to the release date and more reviews are filed. There are currently 36 Don't Worry Darling reviews, which is a solid enough number to get a general sense of the way the wind is blowing. However, Rotten Tomatoes' criteria for a score being statistically significant enough to call a wide release movie Certified Fresh say that the film must have a minimum of 80 reviews. It doesn't seem like the film has a lot of potential to make it over the edge into Certified Fresh territory, but there is still a chance it could at least make its way to Fresh if enough of the second wave of reviewers like the film.
What will be particularly interesting is the box office take from Don't Worry Darling. There are so many factors influencing the film in one way or another that it seems unlikely its actual quality, good or bad, will get in the way of curious people trying to see it. It's likely that it will get a significant box office boost from being such a lightning-rod of controversy, especially as it's positioned at the end of a long month that has an extreme dearth of significant wide releases.