Josh Brolin’s New Thriller Is Already Sinking at the Box Office

*Whalefall*, a survival thriller starring Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin, opened to about $8 million at the US box office. The result is a weak start against its reported $60 million production budget, with the film also facing competition from other new releases.

Directed by Brian Duffield, the film follows Jay Gardiner, who is swallowed by a sperm whale while searching for his dead father’s remains off California’s central coast. With only an hour of oxygen left, he draws on lessons from his father in an effort to escape; the screenplay by Duffield and Daniel Kraus is based on Kraus’s novel.