Taika Waititi Blasts Film Critics as 'Klara and the Sun' Scores 26% and Struggles at the Box Office

Hollywood director Taika Waititi is in the news over his latest film 'Klara and the Sun' — but the conversation is not about the film's merits. It is about his public attack on film critics. The film currently sits at a 26 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, said to be based on 90 reviews. Around the same time, comments attributed to Waititi surfaced on social media in which he called critics 'sad, lost souls' and mocked them for never achieving their own dreams of becoming artists.

This report is built from the available information points, and it must be stated plainly that Sony Pictures has issued no official statement, and no link or screenshot of the Instagram post has been independently verified. Every figure and claim below should be read as reported information, not as established fact.

Key points at a glance

• 'Klara and the Sun' is reported at 26 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, on a base of 90 reviews.
• Domestic box office is reported at 1.067 million dollars.
• TheWrap reported that Sony Pictures was reportedly scaling back the film's release.
• Waititi said on Instagram that critics are 'sad, lost souls' who never became artists themselves.
• The film adapts Kazuo Ishiguro's novel of the same name and stars Jenna Ortega, Mia Tharia, Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi and Natasha Lyonne.

What was said on Instagram

According to the available comments, Waititi turned criticism of the film into a personal attack. He said critics are 'sad, lost souls' who could not achieve their own dreams of becoming artists and therefore comment on the art of others. He also said he has not read a review of anything aimed at him or his peers in almost 15 years, and added that he does listen to the people.

The statement contradicts itself. In the same breath it claims he has not read reviews for 15 years, while also demonstrating precise awareness of who hated 'Jojo Rabbit' and of how the current film is being received. Both can only be true if he is relying on secondhand summaries rather than reading reviews directly — meaning the claim cannot be taken at face value.

The deeper weakness is that the statement does not answer the criticism. It attacks the critic's biography instead of engaging with what might be wrong with the film's story or direction.

The 'Jojo Rabbit' argument and its problem

The centrepiece of Waititi's position is that the same people who rejected this film also rejected his 2026 release 'Jojo Rabbit.' The report also states that 'Jojo Rabbit' received negative reviews from some critics.

Serious caution is required here. On outside information, 'Jojo Rabbit' was widely well reviewed, was nominated for Best Picture, and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. 'Some critics disliked it' is technically true of nearly every film ever made, which makes the claim unfalsifiable and therefore a weak foundation for an argument.

Note that this correction comes from outside the article's own facts, not from within it. It should be treated as a flag rather than a final finding: the Rotten Tomatoes page for 'Jojo Rabbit' should be re-checked before publication. Either way, the sentence 'critics hated Jojo Rabbit' should not be repeated downstream as fact.

What 26 percent actually means

The number sounds straightforward but needs interpretation. The Tomatometer is not an average rating. It is the proportion of critics who rated the film 'fresh' against the total. Twenty-six percent means roughly 23 or 24 of 90 critics were positive.

What is missing is the average rating — say, out of 10. A 26 percent with a 4.5/10 average and a 26 percent with a 2.0/10 average are different stories. Also missing: how many of the 90 were top critics, and what the audience score is. A sample of 90 is adequate for stability, so the number is probably solid even if its meaning is thin.

Box office: 1.067 million dollars

TheWrap is cited for a domestic gross of 1.067 million dollars. The report calls this 'just' — but 'just' is the language of the story, not a finding derived from the data.

Making sense of the figure requires information that is absent: the budget, the theatre count, the per-screen average, the weekend ranking, and international grosses. Without these, no claim that the film is a flop can be derived — only that the number is small. The precision to the thousand signals weekend box-office reporting, which means the figure will be superseded within a week.

Similar caution applies to Sony. TheWrap reported that Sony was scaling back the international release. There are two hedges stacked here — the source is TheWrap, and the story itself says 'reportedly.' No Sony statement is included. 'Sony scaled back the release' is an over-assertion; 'TheWrap reported that Sony was scaling back' is accurate.

What the film is

'Klara and the Sun' adapts Kazuo Ishiguro's 2026 novel of the same name, a widely respected literary work. Jenna Ortega plays Klara and Mia Tharia plays Josie. Amy Adams plays Josie's mother. Supporting cast includes Aran Murphy, Steve Buscemi and Natasha Lyonne.

This is the lowest-risk material in the story, easily checked against marketing materials. But it carries contextual weight: a prestige literary adaptation with an Oscar-adjacent cast, directed by the filmmaker behind 'Jojo Rabbit.' In other words, this is the film that was supposed to work — and that implicit expectation powers the entire frame of the story.

One technical point belongs on the record. The source material never explicitly states that Waititi directed 'Klara and the Sun'; it is conveyed only through 'his latest film.' The inference is correct in practice, but it should not be recorded as a quoted fact without verification.

What the story does not say

The most important gap is the audience response. Waititi's own line is that he listens to the people — and the one figure that would test that claim, the audience score, is absent. That single omission makes the entire debate one-sided.

Beyond that: there is no publication date and no byline. There is no Sony statement. There is no budget or marketing spend. There is no theatre count, per-screen average or international figure. No named critic responds, so the piece is one-sided by construction. It is unclear whether the Instagram post is still live, and whether it was a Story or a feed post. And there is no check on whether Waititi has attacked critics before — the '15 years' claim is presented unexamined.

Three flaws in the argument

Read as an argument, the quoted position has three identifiable defects. First, it answers criticism with biography: 'they never became artists' is not an argument, it is an ad hominem. Second, it is self-sealing, as described above. Third, 'I listen to the people' implicitly makes audience reception the valid metric — yet the audience score is never produced, so the claim is never tested.

One more thing the story does not say but readers should understand: the headline implies Waititi struck out 'after' the 26 percent score. Nothing shows he saw the score or timed the post to it. The post is dated Friday, 30 October, with no year given, so even the temporal relationship cannot be checked. The headline's 'after' is a framing device, not a reported fact.

The story's implicit sequence — bad reviews, then bad box office, then an outburst — is likewise unevidenced. Reviews and box office are plausibly co-effects of the same cause, the film itself. The story presents them as a chain.

Time sensitivity

Two of the four load-bearing facts decay within a week. The Rotten Tomatoes score moves with every added review. The domestic gross is a weekend figure. Sony's decision can be reversed or confirmed, and the Instagram post may be deleted. Cast, plot and source novel are stable.

There is also a date puzzle. The story gives '51-year-old' and 'Friday, 30 October' but no year. Those two clues are jointly consistent only with a 2026 timeframe — Waititi's birthday falls in August, and 30 October falls on a Friday in 2026, not 2026. That arithmetic should be verified independently, but assuming 2026 in the meantime would be an error.

Bottom line

Structurally sound, evidentially thin. The quotes are the strongest material — direct, attributable, vivid. The numbers are the weakest — unanchored, undated, second-hand and decaying. The story's neutrality is stylistic only: it withholds the audience score, the one figure that would test the subject's own argument, and lets a contestable 'Jojo Rabbit' premise stand unchallenged.

Read the quoted position as reported speech, not established fact. And treat the causal chain implied by the headline as unproven.