In Richard Lawson’s review of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another for The Hollywood Reporter, the veteran critic described it as a “bracingly timely wonder.” The same can be said of Leonardo DiCaprio’s support of it.
It’s a timely wonder that the Oscar winning actor — one of Hollywood’s highest caliber movie stars who prefers privacy over press and grants only select interviews while in a release cycle — signed off on a press tour that matched the current cultural moment. DiCaprio did a handful of TikToks, sat for a podcast interview on Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights and appeared on late night courtesy of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
It’s not quite Timothee Chalamet dropping by College Game Day to promote A Complete Unknown-level, but pretty close: DiCaprio and pals made their way to Fortnite, he posed inside Regal Union Square for a TikTok with trending audio, B.o.B.’s “Out of My Mind” featuring Nicki Minaj (“What’s your name? B.o.B.? So, they calling you Bob?” as a nod to his character’s name), got chased by co-star Chase Infiniti through a theater as she begged him and PTA to record TikToks, and teamed with Benicio del Toro to shill for Fandango (“Yeah, sensei, where do we get our tickets?” DiCaprio asks del Toro). These are scenes not seen until this film came along. (It was also pretty wild to find out that DiCaprio is Team Conrad, at least according to Infiniti who brought her A-list co-star into The Summer I Turned Pretty discourse during London junket.)
Del Toro, Infiniti, DiCaprio, Taylor and Penn at London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on Sept. 16, 2025.
(Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images)
According to a knowledgeable source, the reason it made sense to pull PTA’s finest like DiCaprio, del Toro, Infiniti, Regina Hall and Teyana Taylor into the creative digital strategy was because of the film itself. Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Vineland, One Battle After Another explores the lasting repercussions of the actions of two former revolutionaries, Bob (DiCaprio) and Perfidia (Taylor), when their teenage daughter, Willa (Infiniti), is hunted by a former adversary, Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a white supremacist looking to cover-up any evidence of his past misdeeds. With Perfidia having vanished 16 years earlier, a burnt-out and paranoid Bob sets out to rescue his daughter with the help of revolutionaries, Sensei Sergio (del Toro) and Deandra (Regina Hall), who have their own battles to fight.
While that sounds ultra serious, the film has no shortage of laughter thanks in large part to DiCaprio’s performance which features some moments of pure slapstick. Those elements allowed the marketing and publicity team to lean into the irreverent tone and think outside the traditional press tour layout by positioning its stars in an accessible way. The fact that DiCaprio agreed says a lot about his faith in such a plan.
“Every campaign must be bespoke, and you have to quickly shift based on what the audience is telling you,” Warner Bros. Pictures co-head of global motion picture marketing Dana Nussbaum told The New York Times recently. Nussbaum runs the department alongside Christian Davin. “The audience moves really fast, and you have to be moving at the same pace.”
Audiences moved to theaters on opening weekend, that’s for sure. One Battle After Another easily finished atop the box office on its debut weekend, earning an estimated $22.4 million plus another $26 million and change abroad to finish just shy of $50 million for a global cume. By Friday, it’s reached $66.4 million and is expected to climb as strong word-of-mouth (and glowing critical praise) keeps it in contention for the top spots beyond already becoming PTA’s highest opening of all time.
See the One Battle After Another viral moments below.
