How Did An Anthony Mackie Epic Become One of The Biggest Box Office Flops Ever?
Desert Warrior cost $150 million. It’s made back $517,508.
Did you know that Desert Warrior was coming to a theater near you? Few seem to have been aware of this fact, as the Anthony Mackie-starring attempt at an old-fashioned desert epic from director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) is on track to become one of the biggest box-office flops of all time.
It really is that dire: Desert Warrior made $487,848 across 1,010 screens in its first weekend at the American box office, which is a measly $483.01 per screen. It’s the worst opening weekend for a wide-release film so far in 2026, and an embarrassing outcome for a film with a $150 million budget.
The film’s got a solid cast: star Aiysha Hart (Discovery of Witches) isn’t well known in the United States, but Anthony Mackie (Captain America: Brave New World) is in the MCU, which should draw at least a few fans. Sharlito Copely and Sir Ben Kingsley play supporting roles, alongside Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud (Kingdom of Heaven).
So what went wrong here? Vulture did a deep dive into the film’s production, which was plagued with problems from the start. The unfathomably expensive studio backlot and media complex promised to the filmmakers by Saudi Arabia was still under construction when production began, triggering a cascade of issues. Infrastructure problems, extras and crew members who had to be shipped in from other countries, even a sandstorm that made shooting difficult. Then the real problems began.
Principal photography for Desert Warrior was completed in 2021, but post-production dragged on for several more years, as executive shakeups led to “creative differences” that caused Wyatt to exit (and later re-join) the film. In 2025, Wyatt made his only public comment on the matter, telling Variety, “there was a desire to start to change the movie. And it wasn’t really the movie that I had set out to make, nor had I shot. So I resisted, and I was sidelined. I was sidelined for a good period.”
Wyatt’s stock has been down for a while — his last two films, The Gambler (2014) and Captive State (2019), both scored in the mid-forties on Rotten Tomatoes — but his intentions with Desert Warrior seem to have been pure, or at least endearingly old-fashioned. In the press release announcing the film’s acquisition, he’s quoted as saying, “I’m privileged to have played my part in perhaps one of the last in-camera on location action epics.”
Wyatt’s epic has been praised for its cinematography, but not much else.
In the end, the Saudi-owned MBC Group agreed to restore full creative control to Wyatt, who turned in his second director’s cut in September 2025 (another, pre-studio-meddling director’s cut was apparently completed back in 2021-2022). But after premiering to mixed reviews at the Zurich Film Festival last fall, a lack of promotion from the film’s inexperienced studio completed the formula for a flop.
In the end, the main ingredients here seem to have been inexperience and overconfidence, as a company that had no idea how to make a $150 million tentpole film decided to make one anyway. And now that mistake will cost them nearly all of that investment.
