Russell Crowe’s ‘Nuremberg’ Is Poised To Overtake Clint Eastwood’s Groundbreaking WWII Hit — But There’s a Catch
Having completed an entire month of release in domestic theaters, the new World War II drama film Nuremberg is approaching what could be its final milestone. The movie hasn’t exactly broken out at the box office, indicating, once again, that older audiences aren’t as enthusiastic about venturing out to theaters as they were. Nuremberg is mainly targeted at older crowds, who typically don’t rush out to watch films on opening weekend. But this time, they didn’t really turn out on subsequent weekends either, seemingly saving the movie for when it hits the PVOD market. Nuremberg will likely explode on home video, as movies with exceptional audience scores tend to, but it probably won’t have the legs to pass the $15 million mark at the domestic box office. This weekend, the film will make a last-ditch attempt to overtake a modern classic of the war genre, director Clint Eastwood‘s Letters from Iwo Jima.
Currently, the two films are separated by just around half a million, with Nuremberg sitting at $13.3 million and Letters from Iwo Jima having tapped out at $13.7 million. Eastwood’s film was a bigger hit internationally, grossing around $70 million at the global box office around two decades ago. Nuremberg still hasn’t passed the $20 million mark, although it hasn’t been fully rolled out internationally yet. Letters from Iwo Jima was released in 2006, as one half of an ambitious cinematic experiment by Eastwood. It served as a companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, which was set in the same time period and presented the same historical events through the American perspective. Letters from Iwo Jima, on the other hand, is essentially a Japanese-language film. The studio — Warner Bros. — clearly had more faith in Flags of Our Fathers, giving it a reported $90 million production budget.
Those Who Watched ‘Nuremberg’ Loved It
But that film could only gross $65 million globally, while its counterpart made $3 million more but against a much slimmer $19 million reported budget. Letters from Iwo Jima was also the better-reviewed of the two films, and is currently sitting at a “certified fresh” 91% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, as compared to Flags of Our Fathers‘ 76% score. Nuremberg, on the other hand, currently holds a 72% critics’ score and a stunning 96% audience score on RT.
Starring Russell Crowe as the Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring and Rami Malek as an American psychiatrist, the film is playing in theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date
November 7, 2025
Runtime
148 minutes
Director
James Vanderbilt
Writers
James Vanderbilt, Jack El-Hai
Producers
István Major, Richard Saperstein, William Sherak, Bradley J. Fischer, Paul Neinstein
