Affairs film flops for Woody Allen

Rifkin’s Festival — Woody Allen’s 49th film — suffers one of the worst US opening weekends of his career.

US director Woody Allen. Picture: Ander Gilleenea/AFP

Woody Allen’s latest film has suffered one of the worst opening weekends of his career after its release in the United States.

Rifkin’s Festival, the 49th film from the writer and director, whose releases were once major events, opened in 26 cinemas at the weekend. The tale of an American husband and wife who both have affairs made $AU34,000, according to the California website The Wrap. It claimed that this represented the lowest takings for an opening weekend in Allen’s career, though it would appear to have exceeded the box-office haul reported from only six theatres in October 2020 for A Rainy Day In New York.

That release followed years of delays after Allen was dropped by his distributor, Amazon Studios, which cancelled a four-film deal. The studio later said that it had cancelled the contract because of Allen’s response to the widespread allegations against Harvey Weinstein in 2017, in which he had expressed sorrow for victims but added: “You also don’t want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere.”

Allen, in a lawsuit against the studio that was later settled, claimed that it had backed out of the contract because of a “25-year-old baseless allegation” — a reference to a claim that he sexually abused his daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992, when she was seven. He has never been charged in relation to the allegations, which he has repeatedly denied. But Farrow reiterated the claims in 2014.

Wallace Shawn, the star of Rifkin’s Festival, said that Farrow’s letter and the MeToo movement had made the director a pariah.

Critics called it one of his worst films. “For completists only,” warned the Los Angeles Times.

The Times