The New Movie Starring Robbie Williams As A Monkey Playing Himself Is A Massive Box Office Flop

‘Better Man’ – the new Robbie Williams biopic starring the Take That legend playing himself (but as a CGI monkey) – has turned out to be a massive box office flop since its cinematic release in December.

Apparently the film itself is very good (91% on Rotten Tomatoes!), but did anyone even know it was a thing? Here’s the trailer:

‘Better Man’ has grossed just $3.5 million worldwide on a budget of over $110,000,000, which is very, very bad news for everyone involved. It’s also a big shame because most people who have seen it are giving it positive reviews:

‘BETTER MAN’, starring Robbie Williams as a CGI monkey, is now Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes at 91%.

Read our review: https://t.co/BdJZpYButH pic.twitter.com/qiostNeQCe

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) January 8, 2025

A big part of the problem is probably that Robbie Williams never made it big in America, even though he was an absolute megastar in the UK and internationally in the 90s and early 00s. He was an original member of the massively successful Take That, and then became even bigger when he went solo.

The film itself is pretty much your standard rock star biopic: kid with a dream, gets his big break, struggles with drugs, damages personal relationships, comes back strong for big famous concert. I’m not sure why exactly Robbie is playing a CGI monkey rather than physically being in the movie himself, but it could be that a) a monkey doing cocaine is hilarious and b) it was probably easier on him to have a speaking role rather than to have to act throughout the whole movie. Or maybe they wanted to fill the monkey movie niche since there’s no new Planet of the Apes coming out this year? F*ck knows.

Honestly, the biggest question is who greenlit an $110 million+ budget for a Robbie Williams biopic, given the UK, Europe and Australia would have to come out in waves for that to even break even, but I guess they saw something in it that the rest of us didn’t. Oh well. We’ll probably check it out once it’s on streaming platforms.

Hit it: