10 Years Later, Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak Remains A Box Office Tragedy

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

"The thing that will always, pun intended, haunt that movie is that it was sold as a horror movie. But I remember distinctly, when we had the meetings [about promotion], they were all targeted toward getting the horror audience for the opening weekend. And I knew we were doomed!" Those are the words of Guillermo del Toro speaking to Vulture, reflecting on his 2015 directorial effort "Crimson Peak."

To del Toro's point, his gothic, romantic, supernatural epic was sold by Universal Pictures to the masses as a straight-up haunted house horror movie in a period setting. From misleading trailers to generically creepy posters, the studio leaned hard and almost purely on the outright horror of it all. What audiences got was something far more difficult to categorize, resulting in a major disconnect between expectations and reality. It resulted in a box office flop that, to this day, remains one of the great tragedies of del Toro's great career as a filmmaker.

In this week's Tales from the Box Office, we're looking back at "Crimson Peak" in honor of its 10th anniversary. We'll go over how it came to be, what happened in the lead-up to its release, what happened once it hit theaters, what happened in the years after it first came out, and what lessons we can learn from it a decade removed. Let's dig in, shall we?

The film centers on an aspiring author named Edith (Mia Wasikowska) who finds herself swept away to a remote gothic mansion after marrying the charming Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). Once there, she meets his sister, Lady Lucille (Jessica Chastain), who is the aggressive protector of her family's dark secrets. Edith, who is capable of communicating with the dead, winds up entangled in the ghostly mystery that haunts the walls of her new home.  

At this stage in his career, del Toro was in an interesting place. He'd made acclaimed movies like "Cronos" and "Pan's Labyrinth," but he was also making bigger and pricier movies, with his kaiju epic "Pacific Rim" making a good-but-not-great $411 million worldwide in 2013. His stock in Hollywood was going up. That's why he was going to direct "The Hobbit" movies before being forced to move on from the adaptations.

After making a $190 million blockbuster, del Toro turned his attention to a smaller (relatively speaking) haunted house movie that very much fit into his larger catalog. The director described "Crimson Peak" as a "much, much smaller movie" and "completely character-driven," in addition to being "an adult movie, an R-rated movie" back in July 2013. He also explained why it was different from anything else he'd done in English up to that point:

"This movie's tone is scary and it's the first time I get to do a movie more akin to what I do in the Spanish movies ... The thing I do in those movies is recontextualization, take a movie and then move it into a completely different place." 

"This is a Gothic romance, haunted house, in the north of England," del Toro concluded.

Del Toro re-partnered with Legendary, who produced "Pacific Rim," with the production company agreeing to finance the picture. But the director had to walk a fine line, ultimately taking less money to make "Crimson Peak" R-rated, as opposed to making it for more money while toning it down to PG-13.

"Legendary loved the screenplay, and they said, 'We want to do it, but this is one budget if it's PG-13 (a bigger budget if it's PG-13), and this is the budget if it's R," del Toro explained in a 2015 interview. "I wanted the luxurious part of the movie, but I wanted the R. So I was tiptoeing into balancing that it stayed an R, but it was luxurious enough to be an old-fashioned production."

That production cost $55 million before marketing. In the mid-budget range for a studio production, but on the higher end for what was being sold as a horror movie. In any event, once the movie was in the can, people responded kindly to it. The early reactions to "Crimson Peak" were largely glowing, with /Film's Jacob Hall calling it "A classical ghost story punctuated by gnarly violence and images of terrible beauty."

Horror master Stephen King was also a big fan of the movie, calling it "gorgeous and just f*****g terrifying." The author added that it "electrified me in the same way Sam Raimi's Evil Dead electrified me when I saw it for the first time way back in the day." The buzz was building, even if that buzz was also damning, in some way.

Legendary may have liked del Toro's script, but Universal had to sell the movie to prospective audiences. They felt leaning into the horror of it all was the move. Part of the problem is that the movie was very tough to classify, but horror-seeking audiences want to be scared. They have an expectation in mind. The trailers promised horror. Buzz be damned, del Toro delivered something that defied the expectations placed upon his movie by the marketing machine.

"Crimson Peak" hit theaters on the weekend of October 16, 2015, with the studio hoping to get in on the Halloween season. The bigger problem is that they weren't the only movie in town seeking to do just that. Sony's big screen take on "Goosebumps" topped the charts that weekend with $23.6 million. Del Toro's gothic romance tale had to settle for fourth place with $13.1 million. It also lost out to Steven Spielberg's eventual Oscar-winner "Bridge of Spies" ($15.3 million).

Despite a lack of overly stiff competition, del Toro's misunderstood, misrepresented passion project was out of the top 10 entirely by the time Daniel Craig's fourth "James Bond" flick, "Spectre," arrived in the first week of November. It was out of theaters altogether after Thanksgiving. The writing was on the wall.

"Crimson Peak" finished its run with $31 million domestically to go with $43.8 million internationally for a grand total of $74.9 million worldwide. It was a flop, with the studio not even coming close to recouping its investment during the theatrical run.

Even aside from the movies that "Crimson Peak" opened against, and even setting aside the misleading marketing, it couldn't have come at a worse time. October seemed logical for Universal, given that they were leaning into the horror of it all. The problem is that the family-friendly "Goosebumps" became a better option. Aside from that, 15 different movies made at least $1 million at the box office that weekend.

One of them was M. Night Shyamalan's "The Visit," which became a big hit for the horror crowd. That was pulling from the intended audience. There was also "Hotel Transylvania 2" in the mix. Outside of the intended audience, Ridley Scott's "The Martian" was in its third weekend of release en route to $630 million worldwide. Other surprise crowd-pleasing hits, such as "The Intern" ($194 million worldwide) and "Sicario" ($85 million worldwide), were still in the top ten that weekend as well

The following weekend didn't help matters either, as "The Last Witch Hunter" and the not-very-well-liked "Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension" arrived. Even though "The Ghost Dimension" is one of the lesser entries in that franchise, it was a Halloween season tradition at that point, becoming a slam-dunk option for many horror fans. In short, just about everything that could have worked against del Toro, Legendary, and Universal here did.

"In 30 years, I have seen 3 wonderful films hampered and hobbled by misguided marketing," del Toro said on Twitter in 2023, speaking about the animated "Rise of the Guardians," which he produced. While it's unclear what the third film is, we know one of the others is "Crimson Peak."

To his credit, del Toro was probably right. Hiddleston was in the middle of his work as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Chastain was on the rise, and Charlie Hunnam ("Sons of Anarchy") was also in the mix. Not to mention that Wasikowska had starred in Tim Burton's $1 billion hit "Alice in Wonderland" just a handful of years earlier. On paper, it was a killer cast and, with respect, a sexy cast that could have helped when it came to marketing the picture to romance-seekers out there.

Fortunately, time has a way of healing certain wounds and righting certain wrongs. Time has caught up to "Crimson Peak," as audiences have continued to find the movie in its post-theatrical run. Arrow Video gave it the red carpet treatment with a stacked Blu-ray release in 2018. It's been tweeted about and monologued about a great deal as well, with no shortage of ink spilled on this movie's behalf.

"This venture into more adult content with the budget of a major Hollywood studio results in a lustful and blood-soaked fantasy that has developed a cult following over the years since its release," wrote Shae Sennett for /Film in 2015, arguing that "Crimson Peak" deserved better. Many, including del Toro, would undoubtedly agree with that sentiment.

Upon reflection, it remains a bit of a tragedy that this movie didn't get a fair shake. That's not to say a PG-13 version or a differently marketed version would have performed better, but it would have been given a fair shot. Slightly misleading marketing isn't always a death sentence. "Magic Mike" marketed a male stripper movie but used it as a Trojan Horse for something a bit deeper. In that case, though, everyone got what they wanted. As such, it became a huge hit.

In the case of "Crimson Peak," horror fans were left feeling misled in some respects. That's where the trouble kicks in. There is a big difference between clever marketing and misleading marketing. The latter rarely pans out. Fortunately, del Toro bounced back in a big way as his follow-up, 2017's "The Shape of Water," would go on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, making $195 million globally against a $19.5 million budget.

Del Toro is now one of Hollywood's most respected directors, with his buzzy new "Frankenstein" movie just around the corner. In that same 2024 interview with Vulture, the filmmaker mused that "Crimson Peak," despite its initial disappointment, is the sort of movie he's happy to be associated with:

"It's a movie that connects with the people who love it at an almost molecular level. Little by little, some movies gather their audience through the years. Some others are very successful right when they come out, then you don't hear from them again. We can have every variation. I'm finding that I'm happier when I'm in a relationship with people who truly find a movie and own it."