In Richard Lawson’s assessment of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After One other for The Hollywood Reporter, the veteran critic described it as a “bracingly well timed surprise.” The identical will be stated of Leonardo DiCaprio’s help of it.
It’s a well timed surprise that the Oscar profitable actor — one in every of Hollywood’s highest caliber film stars who prefers privateness over press and grants solely choose interviews whereas in a launch cycle — signed off on a press tour that matched the present cultural second. DiCaprio did a handful of TikToks, sat for a podcast interview on Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights and appeared on late night time courtesy of The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon.
It’s not fairly Timothee Chalamet dropping by School Sport Day to advertise A Full Unknown-level, however fairly shut: DiCaprio and friends made their technique to Fortnite, he posed inside Regal Union Sq. for a TikTok with trending audio, B.o.B.’s “Out of My Thoughts” that includes Nicki Minaj (“What’s your identify? B.o.B.? So, they calling you Bob?” as a nod to his character’s identify), obtained chased by co-star Chase Infiniti by a theater as she begged him and PTA to report TikToks, and teamed with Benicio del Toro to shill for Fandango (“Yeah, sensei, the place can we get our tickets?” DiCaprio asks del Toro). These are scenes not seen till this movie got here alongside. (It was additionally fairly wild to seek out out that DiCaprio is Crew Conrad, at the least in response to Infiniti who introduced her A-list co-star into The Summer season I Turned Fairly discourse throughout London junket.)
Del Toro, Infiniti, DiCaprio, Taylor and Penn at London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Sq. on Sept. 16, 2025.
(Photograph by Joe Maher/Getty Pictures)
Based on a educated supply, the rationale it made sense to drag PTA’s best like DiCaprio, del Toro, Infiniti, Regina Corridor and Teyana Taylor into the inventive digital technique was due to the movie itself. Impressed by Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Vineland, One Battle After One other 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 seeking to cover-up any proof of his previous misdeeds. With Perfidia having vanished 16 years earlier, a burnt-out and paranoid Bob units out to rescue his daughter with the assistance of revolutionaries, Sensei Sergio (del Toro) and Deandra (Regina Corridor), who’ve their very own battles to struggle.
Whereas that sounds extremely critical, the movie has no scarcity of laughter thanks largely to DiCaprio’s efficiency which options some moments of pure slapstick. These components allowed the advertising and publicity staff to lean into the irreverent tone and assume outdoors the normal press tour format by positioning its stars in an accessible method. The truth that DiCaprio agreed says rather a lot about his religion in such a plan.
“Each marketing campaign should be bespoke, and you need to shortly shift based mostly on what the viewers is telling you,” Warner Bros. Footage co-head of world movement image advertising Dana Nussbaum advised The New York Occasions lately. Nussbaum runs the division alongside Christian Davin. “The viewers strikes actually quick, and you need to be transferring on the identical tempo.”
Audiences moved to theaters on opening weekend, that’s for positive. One Battle After One other simply completed atop the field workplace on its debut weekend, incomes an estimated $22.4 million plus one other $26 million and alter overseas to complete simply shy of $50 million for a world cume. By Friday, it’s reached $66.4 million and is anticipated to climb as sturdy word-of-mouth (and glowing crucial reward) retains it in competition for the highest spots past already changing into PTA’s highest opening of all time.
See the One Battle After One other viral moments under.
