Rebecca Ferguson’s Sci-Fi Movie Edges Past a Critically Acclaimed Futuristic Classic

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Published Feb 11, 2026, 4:01 AM 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).

It has been a mixed year so far for genre cinema, with the underdog Iron Lung overachieving at the box office, while major studio films such as 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Mercy performed poorly. The self-funded and self-distributed Iron Lung marks the directorial debut of YouTuber Markiplier, and has grossed over 10 times its reported $3 million budget already. Both The Bone Temple and Mercy, however, have yet to recoup their reported $60 million budgets. While The Bone Temple opened to franchise-best reviews, Mercy has an explanation for its disappointing performance: the movie was roundly rejected by critics. However, it has now overtaken a movie on the opposite side of the critical spectrum, a movie with which it shares a central theme.

Mercy was directed by Timur Bekmambetov, who remains a pioneer of the "screenlife" format. The movie was presented in the 3D format, aiming to provide a more immersive big-screen experience for audiences than earlier "screenlife" movies such as Searching and Unfriended. Incidentally, both those films counted Bekmambetov as producer and grossed more at the global box office than Mercy, which hasn't been able to capitalize on the presence of A-listers Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson. The movie is now sitting at a 23% score on the aggregator website 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." However, the film's 82% audience score suggests it'll do well on the PVOD market.

Here's the Movie that 'Mercy' Has Overtaken at the Box Office

With nearly $23 million domestically and another $26 million from overseas markets, Mercy's global total currently sits at just under $50 million. This puts the movie ahead of the $48 million that the Oscar-winning sci-fi gem Her concluded its global run with in 2013. Directed by Spike Jonze, the movie featured Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely man in a future Los Angeles, who strikes up a romance with an AI assistant named Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Her was praised for its tender tone and has proven to be rather prescient in this era of ChatGPT friendships; it holds a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes. In Mercy, Ferguson plays an AI judge handling the murder trial of a police officer accused of killing his wife. You can watch Mercy in theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.