Despite a substantial budget, the action film Desert Warrior starring Anthony Mackie and Ben Kingsley is on track to be one of the biggest box office flops of all time. Releasing on April 24, 2026, in the United States, the historical epic had a difficult production, to say the least, and received dismal review scores from critics and audiences. Taking place in seventh-century Arabia, the film follows Princess Hind (Aiysha Har) who refuses to become the concubine of Emperor Kisra (Ben Kingsley) and gains the assistance of the legendary bandit Hanzala (Anthony Mackie) in building an army to confront the empire. The film’s $150 million production budget comes backed by MBC Studios, whose parent company MBC Group is effectively controlled by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Why Desert Warrior crashed hard at the box office
As of May 21, Desert Warrior has only earned a worldwide box office total of $742,066, with $704,280 coming domestically and $37,786 coming internationally, according to Box Office Mojo.
As reported by Deadline, the film had grossed $596,000 across 1,010 screens by April 30 through its opening week in the United States and the Middle East. While its full run in cinemas is not yet over (at the time of writing), the fate of the film as one of the largest, if not the largest, box office flops in history will be difficult to reverse. If we follow the general rule that wide-release movies need to make 2.5 times its budget to break even, due to marketing and other costs, then Desert Warrior would need to gross $375 million to make a profit. And from the looks of it, the film will have trouble breaking the $1 million mark, which is less than 1% of its production budget.
The only good news is that there are other films that have had greater net losses, depending on how box office results are calculated. One of the largest box office bombs is 2023’s The Marvels, which made $206 million on a roughly $374 million budget due to exorbitant post-production costs, according to Forbes. That would mean that the Disney superhero film would have needed to make about $935 million to break even and instead resulted in a net loss of $729 million. If we only use the raw numbers for each film’s budget and box office totals, Desert Warrior had a loss of $149 million and The Marvels had a loss of $169 million.
The historical action movie had an arduous time making it to the silver screen. While principal filming for Desert Warrior ended in February 2022, it took more than four years for it to release. During the film’s post-production, director Rupert Wyatt — who is best known for 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes — had reportedly quit the project due to creative differences but returned to finish the edit later, per Deadline. MBC wanted Wyatt to cut about 20% of the film and desired “more of a Braveheart-style version of the picture” while the director pushed for “nuanced, authored movie.” These differences ultimately led to “Wyatt being benched, though he remained in contact with MBC during his time on the sidelines.”
After a poor test run with audiences in July 2023, Desert Warrior was re-cut, but it still made large Hollywood studios hesitate to distribute the film. Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apple TV+ “were said to be uncertain” about the success of the movie, and some studio chiefs were unsure about the timing of the movie due to rising conflicts in the Middle East and it being “too soon after October 7 for a movie involving rampaging Arab tribes.” Desert Warrior is distributed by American indie company Vertical Entertainment.
Desert Warrior has a low 25% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 3.7 out of 10 rating on IMDB (as of May 21). The movie did not receive a CinemaScore.
