So my quick bit of maths -if he's made £100K on 6 theatres, he should do about £100m on 1,000 theatres?

 

That sounds wildly optimistic but let's see how he does. ^_^

 

Edited January 10Jan 10 by Laura130262

It's still saying not a single person has seen it in Germany :huh:

 

Thanks, Laura.

Please keep it going with that data!

 

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The latest videos for tomorow - too late!

 

 

 

I think the figures from Germany where the release had been 2nd January I think will be late. There had been great reviews here and many will watch I have seen in comments. Still we are early in figures. Next week we will see more reliable ones, I guess.

This is it, the D-day! THIS. IS. IT!!!

Picks up a watermelon and walks backwards into the corn field

has anyone an idea if there will be a release in South America?

Is it a Williams thing . Piece By Piece ) Pharell Williams _ has not done that well either :)

 

 

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl508461057/

View this post on Instagram

Edited January 10Jan 10 by Sydney11

Hopefully it won't go to streaming too soon so the momentum and box office can build like it has been.

Hopefully it won't go to streaming too soon so the momentum and box office can build like it has been.

 

Yeah, we all hope so 🤞

The Slovenian distributer for Better man posted today on Instagram that the movie will be available only for a limited time and we should catch it while it is still available. The audience outside Ljubljana was unfortunately non existent and this post kinda confirms that.

Wow! - from The Jane Goodall Institute ! :o

 

 

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Edited January 10Jan 10 by Sydney11

The Slovenian distributer for Better man posted today on Instagram that the movie will be available only for a limited time and we should catch it while it is still available. The audience outside Ljubljana was unfortunately non existent and this post kinda confirms that.

Let's hope they will catch some additional vibe from next 2-3 days (it should be!) and go to the cinema.

 

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Well, I'm not sure Australian figures have been calculated correctly before.

At least based on this message about box office for BM there.

 

In the first figures for 2025 ‘Better Man’ debuted at number 7 for Weekend screenings.

 

‘Better Man’ generated $1,103,900 in box office revenues across the weekend and $2,885,148 over 11 days of activity compared to ‘Sonic The Hedgehog 3’ with $4,102,209 for the weekend and $15,718,772 in revenue for the same 11 day period.

 

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Well, still 7.7 at IMDB but interesting point that within this week an average mark in USA shifted from 6.3 to 7.0 right now.

Looking for more! :P

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14260836/ratin...?ref_=tt_ov_rat

 

 

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Robbie's feelings on the movie reaction at TIFF in Canada since weeks

 

10.01.25 update

 

Awards Nominations (39) for Better Man by far:

 

Hollywood Music In Media Awards (HMMA) 2024

- 20.11

- Best Original Song - Feature Film (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

- Best Music Themed Film, Biopic or Musical (Paul Currie, Michael Gracey, Craig McMahon, Coco Xiaolu, MaJules Daly)

 

Rolling Stone UK Awards 2024

- 28.11

- The Film Award (Better Man) -

Winner

 

Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards (WAFCA) 2024

- 08.12

- Best Motion Capture (Jonno Davies)

 

Indiana Film Journalists Association (IFJA) Awards 2024

- 16.12

- Best Vocal/Motion Capture Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies)

- Best Stunt/Movement Choreography (Slavisa Ivanovic, Ashey Wallen, Nicholas Daines, Spencer Susser, Tim Wong)

- Best Special Effects (Luke Millar, Scott MacIntyre)

- Original Vision Award

 

Critics Association of Central Florida Awards

- 02.01

- Best Hybrid Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies)

 

DiscussingFilm Global Critic Award (DFGFCA) 2024

- 04.01

- Best Visual Effects

 

Golden Globes 2025

- 05.01

- Best Original Song (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

 

Utah Film Critics Association (UFCA) Awards

- 06.01

- Best Visual Effects

 

Austin Film Critics Association (AFCA) Awards

- 06.01

- Best Voice Acting/Animated/Digital Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies)

 

Critics Choice Awards 2025

- 12.01

- Best Visual Effects (Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs)

 

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards 2025

- 07.02

- Best Film

- Best Direction in Film (Michael Gracey)

- Best Screenplay in Film (Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson)

- Best Lead Actor in Film (Jonno Davies)

- Best Supporting Actress in Film

- Best Supporting Actor in Film

- Best Cinematography in Film

- Best Sound in Film

- Best Original Score in Film

- Best Soundtrack

- Best Original Song (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

- Best Visual Effects or Animation

- Best Editing in Film presented by Spectrum Films

- Best Production Design in Film

- Best Costume Design in Film

- Best Casting in Film

 

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) International Awards 2025

- 07.02

- Best Film

- Best Lead Actor in Film (Jonno Davies)

- Best Supporting Actress in Film (Alison Steadman)

- Best Supporting Actor in Film (Damon Herriman)

- Best Direction in Film (Michael Gracey)

- Best Screenplay in Film (Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson)

 

Annie Awards 2025

- 08.02

- Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Live Action Production (Shaun Freeman, Luisma Lavin Peredo, Carlos Lin, Seoungseok Charlie Kim, Kaori Miyazawa)

 

Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) Award 2025

- 12.02

- Outstanding Original Song for a Comedy or Musical Visual Media Production (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

 

Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE)

- 23.02

- Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Feature Motion Picture (Supervising Music Editor: Timothy Ryan; Music Editors: Craig Beckett, Lena Glikson, Cory Milano, Liam Moses, Joe E. Rand, Chris Scallan, Emily Rogers Swanson; Vocal Editors: Noah Hubbell, Anna Muehlichen)

 

Better Man: Inside Michael Gracey’s Apeshit Robbie Williams Musical

 

The Greatest Showman director on the influence of Bob Fosse, Terry Gilliam, and the thrill of acting on a crazy gamble.

 

by Prabhjot Bains

Published on January 10, 2025

 

In a cinematic slate inundated with music biopics, precious few leave a mark as exhilarating and as purely insane as Michael Gracey’s Better Man. Visually ambitious, oozing with style, and boasting some of the most frenetically seamless editing in recent memory, the rise-and-fall tale of British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams tightly grips the tired biopic formula and makes it shine beyond our wildest dreams. Oh, and then there’s the matter of him being portrayed by a computer-generated ape.

 

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Better Man brims with such madcap decisions that in any other film would amass eye rolls, but like Williams himself, it keeps us hooked to the limelight. Like its subject, it’s a musical that exists on the edge of coming apart, and it’s only in embracing that precarious fine line that the real wonder, charm, and beauty of the experience wash over audiences. For Gracey, the thrill of acting on that gamble informs every facet of his bonkers vision.

 

“A musical already has a heightened reality… you add a monkey on top of that and now you’re in a very heightened reality,” Gracey tells RANGE. “And the great thing about it is you can step between that and pure imagination pretty seamlessly. That is what I enjoy about the fact that it is a musical and the lead is a monkey: it allows you to step between the two worlds without being jarring for the audience.” It’s a feat that somehow makes the sight of a monkey doing lines and getting a hand job in a nightclub the least ludicrous of its many outrageous sequences.

 

Better Man tracks Williams’ childhood in the shabby town of Stoke-on-Trent, to his stint in the boy band Take That, to his meteoric rise as a solo pop star—and all the drugs, infidelity, and crushing fame that came with it. But in doing so, Gracey maintains “a want to explore Rob’s internal and external life.” Each precisely crafted musical number is armed with a surreal timbre, plunking us into Williams’ amorphous, drug-addled mindscape with verve, vigour, and dizzying panache. Whether it be a record-breaking performance at Knebworth transforming into a medieval battle royale or Williams submerged in a frozen lake surrounded by a school of shark-like paparazzi, our overloaded senses are gloriously thrown into the gauntlet of pop superstardom.

 

“In a number like ‘Come Undone’… as Williams is driving away into the fog, is it at that point he’s going into the fog of his mind? I don’t know.” Gracey continues. “At a certain point… we are 100% in this guy’s mind…but somewhere in between we transition from the external life and into the internal life.” The wonder of making sense of those shifts is where the true ecstasy of Better Man takes hold. To see it is the only way to believe it.

 

These sonic dives into the psyche of its subject, including Better Man’s Broadway-styled titling, draw directly from the musicals of Bob Fosse. “I was very inspired by films like All That Jazz…for me, it’s like Fosse meets Terry Gilliam,” Gracey says. “I love the way Fosse choreographs the camera and his rhythmic editing, he’s such a masterful creative force and the same goes for Gilliam… the design work in something like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen [stands] as the most beautiful art-directed film of all time. These are the sort of films I grew in awe of and when you get older you lean into those points of inspiration.” When RANGE suggested a double feature of Better Man and Gilliam’s own simian-centric Twelve Monkeys, Gracey was all in on the idea: “Ha ha ha! That’s very funny.”

 

While Better Man serves as a snapshot of the late 90s Britpop scene, full of MTV red carpets and run-ins with the (in)famous Liam Gallagher, its delirious lens remains firmly fixed on Williams’ personal journey. “The time plays a big part in the style, art direction, hairdos, and costuming because you are going through those distinct eras, but for as much that front-facing side is there, I favoured the personal story,” Gracey notes. “I don’t relate to standing in front of 150,000 people, but I do relate to the voices in my head, to looking in the mirror and finding faults in myself, the love of a nan, and the acceptance of a father—these parts of Rob are universal.”

 

Williams’ significant involvement in the project renders Better Man a more intimate and, surprisingly, self-effacing experience. In a cinematic climate full of sanitized stories, as Gracey says, “Rob is fortunately an over-sharer and was adamant it be a warts-and-all experience.” He continues, “We did a year-and-a-half of interviews that formed the basis of the script, which is why you really do hear Rob’s voice in the film.”

 

“When I tried to recreate them, they never sounded as good, they sounded like a performance… that’s why you feel the hand of Rob throughout, because it is him telling you the story from a spontaneous recording,” Gracey says. “I was sure when Rob watched it back he was going to take out some of the scenes, but he did not change one single shot of the film.” It all culminates in an experience that is as emotionally resonant and vulnerable as it is completely mad. While Robbie Williams’ fame didn’t quite translate across the pond, it’s time we all go bananas for his apeshit musical.

 

https://readrange.com/better-man-michael-gracey-interview/

@1877803431793983987

So fingers crossed anyway!

 

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Some more details about BM releases in exUSSR countries:

 

Russia

- Since today we finally have the screenings in original language too, so I will try to catch one of them to hear Robbie's voice during weeking.

- Still confident 7.8 average mark here.

- My colleagues told me they watched this during winter holidays and told me they liked it a lot and name this movie as 'very healing'. Wow! Same words like Rob uses during this promo.

 

Belarus

- It was a big surpise for me when my friend informed me that they had their premiere (pre-screening) even earlier than we are! It was December 19 (Minsk) vs December 21 (Moscow).

 

Ukraine

- There was a premiere (pre-screening) in Kyev on January 7 and wide release is starting today. I do know they had a very beautiful tickets, not standard e-tickets :)

 

 

Kazakhstan

- Starting the wide release now

 

Moldova

- Already in the theaters since New Year in two versions: original + Russian

 

 

Really interesting facts Alex. I wonder how the movie will do in Kazakhstan & Moldova ...

 

We sit down with one of the UK’s biggest ever pop stars to discuss his new biopic, Better Man.

 

One of the coolest things to happen to me when I was covering TIFF back in the fall, was that Paramount invited me to interview the iconic singer Robbie Williams, who was at the fest for the premiere of his big-screen biopic, Better Man. If you’ve read my review or seen any of the ads, you’ll know this isn’t a conventional film. Directed by The Greatest Showman’s Michael Gracey, the film represents Williams in a highly unusual way – a CGI Chimpanzee plays him. That’s right, Williams is a monkey in the movie, while everyone else is human (although the character is meant to be human as well – it’s more metaphorical).

 

While I’ll grant you that aspect might make people tune out, it works tremendously well. I was lucky enough to sit down with Williams for an extended chat, in which he explained to me why he was down for this crazy approach. One thing Williams noted (with good humour) is that he’s nowhere near as well-known in North America as he is in Europe, and he hopes that folks who don’t know his turbulent life story might see some of themselves in this CGI monkey.

 

I also spoke to Jonno Davies, the actor who plays Wiliams in mo-cap, and director Michel Gracey, who was more than happy to explain why he wanted this famous pop star to be played by a CGI monkey. As I told Gracey, when I heard the premise,

I thought he was crazy, but in the end, he turned out to be crazy like a fox because the movie is damn good.

 

https://www.joblo.com/better-man-interview-...google_vignette

 

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Same interviewer wrote the review.

 

Better Man Review: Robbie Williams played by a CGI Chimp?

 

The craziest thing about this movie isn’t that Robbie Williams is played by a CGI chimp – but that it works so well.

 

By Chris Bumbray

January 10th 2025, 10:17am

 

PLOT: The life of international pop star Robbie Williams, from his early days as a member of Take That to his breakthrough as a solo artist and his struggles with addiction.

 

REVIEW: There’s one way that Better Man is completely different from any music-based biopic you’ve ever seen. The director, Michael Gracey, depicts Robbie Williams as a CGI chimpanzee, with cutting-edge VFX from WETA, with actor Jonno Davies playing him in a mo-cap performance (although they use Williams’s distinctive eyes). The singer himself provides the narration. It’s risky and a big swing, but here’s the thing. The craziest thing about Better Man isn’t the fact that Robbie Williams is presented as a CGI chimpanzee but rather that this risky conceit works quite well.

 

Here’s the thing – when an iconic person is impersonated in a biopic, we get caught up over various surface-level things, with the biggest being whether or not the actor looks like the person they’re playing. By having Williams represented as a monkey, you get over that aspect much quicker than you would otherwise. Strangely, it helps you invest more in the character.

 

It’s an inspired choice for Gracey, who has a comprehensive background in VFX and directed one of the more popular recent musicals, The Greatest Showman. It also may help the movie attract a larger North American audience than it would otherwise. Despite being a European household name, Robbie Williams is still largely unknown in the United States.

 

This all adds up to a highly unique musical biopic that tells a story many readers of this site may not be familiar with. The movie charts Williams’s rise to fame, with him initially the bad boy in a band called Take That, which was gigantic in the nineties all throughout Europe. He was a household name, but as the movie shows, he was kicked out due to his growing substance abuse issues and tensions with the rest of the group. He re-emerged as a solo artist, with his fame eventually dwarfing that of the group he left, but his demons did not let up on him as he continued to struggle mightily with addiction.

 

The film depicts Williams’s life in a pretty unsparring way, with him often coming off as a brat burning bridges relentlessly. Yet, the film also has empathy for the fact that his greatest enemy was himself, visualizing his demons as other versions of himself mock him from the audience.

 

Gracey depicts this all in a bold, energetic way. The movie climaxes with a major action sequence where Williams literally battles different versions of himself in a moment I didn’t see coming. Through it all, Gracey often dazzles the audience with set pieces, such as an amazing musical number where Williams and the rest of Take Take dance down Regent Street performing “Rock DJ.”

 

Gracey throws in everything but the iamspamspamamisink to entertain his audience. While Williams may not be so well known in North America, the movie does feel like it has the potential to be a solid hit, even if the hard-R rating may keep it from the audience that made The Greatest Showman such a hit. Then again, given Williams’s struggles, could you do a watered-down PG-13 version? Who’d want to see that?

 

While the visual spectacle aspect of the movie will probably be what sells this as a potential blockbuster, it also has a lot of heart, with a lot of it revolving around his fractured relationship with his father, played here by Steve Pemberton, who’s a frustrated, wannabe performer who imparts his love of showbiz on Robbie.

 

While I went into Better Man with a raised eyebrow, wary of the chimpanzee aspect, to my delight, it worked wonderfully. As far as big-screen biopics go, this is a pretty deliriously entertaining one, and I had a blast watching it. It’s definitely one to keep an eye out for.

 

9/10

 

https://www.joblo.com/better-man-tiff-review/