Rebecca Ferguson's Sci-Fi Film Struggles at Box Office, Overtakes Del Toro's Disowned Flop

4 weeks ago 11

Published Jan 30, 2026, 12:25 PM EST

Rahul Malhotra is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has been writing for Collider for over two years, and has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal to introduce audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Swing and a miss > measured victory. Also, #JusticeForHan. (He/Him).

The sci-fi film Mercy has completed its first week in theaters, but hasn't performed quite as well as anyone involved would've liked. The movie is expected to lose its box office crown to director Sam Raimi's horror comeback, Send Help, which is poised to gross around $15 million in its domestic debut this weekend. Mercy, starring Rebecca Ferguson and Chris Pratt, opened with around $11 million last week, and still hasn't hit the $15 million mark domestically. At the worldwide box office, Mercy only recently hit the $25 million milestone — well below its reported budget of $60 million. In all probability, the sci-fi film will conclude its box office run without having recovered its reported budget, marking a major setback for both Ferguson and Pratt. That said, Mercy has now overtaken the lifetime global box office haul of Guillermo del Toro's ill-fated Hollywood debut, Mimic.

Released in 1997, Mimic remains a controversial entry in the Oscar-winning director's filmography. The film was produced by the brothers Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein, who were notorious for imposing their creative views on every film distributed by their company. Like so many other films distributed by Miramax in the 1990s, Mimic was manhandled by the Weinsteins, which led del Toro to disown the theatrical cut. The movie failed to recover its reported budget of $30 million, and years later, in an interview with The Independent, del Toro described working on it as "one of the worst experiences" of his life. Mimic earned mixed reviews and now sits at a 67% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, "Mimic finds director Guillermo del Toro struggling to inject his unique sensibilities into a studio picture — and delivering just enough genre thrills to recommend."

'Mercy' Opened to Poor Reviews

The filmmaker recovered from the bad experience, of course. He went on to win the Best Director Academy Award for The Shape of Water, and his latest film, Frankenstein, recently earned nine Oscar nods. Mercy, on the other hand, can hardly be categorized as an awards contender. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov, Mercy earned a 24% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus reads, "Constricting its two stars inside an airless presentation of a clunky techno-thriller premise, Mercy is tedious enough to make you cry uncle." Ferguson will hope to bounce back with Dune: Part Three later this year, while Pratt has The Super Mario Galaxy Movie to look forward to.