Box office The film grossed $43.1 million in North America and $43.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $86.4 million, against its $40 million budget. In its second weekend, the film dropped to number five, grossing an additional $7.3 million. In its third weekend, the film dropped to number eight, grossing $3.2 million. In its fourth weekend, the film dropped to number 11, grossing $1.6 million. In 2026, English director
Edgar Wright confessed to the
Far Out Magazine website that he'd "rubbed his hands with glee" when
Million Ways flopped, because when Wright's movie
Scott Pilgrim vs the World bombed at the box office, McFarlane had
tweeted, "Scott Pilgrim 0, the World 2."
Critical response A Million Ways to Die in the West received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Review aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 33% rating based on 212 reviews, with an average score of 4.90/10. The site's consensus states, "While it offers a few laughs and boasts a talented cast, Seth MacFarlane's overlong, aimless
A Million Ways to Die in the West is a disappointingly scattershot affair." Another review aggregation website,
Metacritic, gave a score of 44 out of 100, based on reviews from 43 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale; opening weekend demographics were 55% male and 72% over 25 years of age. Claudia Puig's review in
USA Today was largely positive, writing, "A Western with a contemporary sensibility and dialogue that sounds markedly modern,
A Million Ways to Die in the West is quintessential MacFarlane, at once silly and witty, juvenile and clever."
Stephen Holden's review in
The New York Times was mainly neutral, calling the film "a live-action spinoff of
Family Guy, with different characters." "While the whole thing feels weirdly miscalculated to me,
A Million Ways to Die in the West tweaks the formula just enough, delivers a few laughs and keeps the guest stars coming," wrote
Salon columnist Andrew O'Hehir. Rafer Guzman of
Newsday found the film amusing, calling it "another example of MacFarlane's ability to mix poop jokes with romance, foul language with sweet sentiment, offensive humor with boyish charm." Scott Mendelson of
Forbes commended MacFarlane's decision to make an unconventional western comedy, but summarized the film as "just ambitious enough for that to be genuinely disappointing." Michael O'Sullivan at
The Washington Post was mixed, deeming the film a "broad, wildly hit-or-miss satire," remarking that he found few of the jokes in the film funny. "Spiritually, it's closer to a mid-range crowd-pleaser such as
City Slickers than
Blazing Saddles, too enamoured of genre convention to reach for the comic dynamite," wrote Mike McCahill at
The Guardian. Michael Phillips of the
Chicago Tribune criticized MacFarlane's acting and direction as: "A failure of craft. He can't direct action, or even handle scenery well. He can't set up a visual joke properly without resorting to head-butting and bone-crunching, and he doesn't know how, or when, to move his camera. He's not good enough as a romantic lead to anchor a picture."
Richard Corliss of
Time called the film a "sagebrush comedy whose visual grandeur and appealing actors get polluted by some astonishingly lazy writing." Scott Foundas of
Variety found the film "overlong and uninspired," criticizing the film's "lazy writing," and MacFarlane's "surprisingly bland" comic performance. Rene Rodriguez of the
Miami Herald gave the film one star, commenting, "There are enough laughs scattered throughout
A Million Ways to Die in the West that while you're watching it, the movie seems like a passable comedy. By the time you get home, though, you can barely remember the jokes." John DeFore of
The Hollywood Reporter criticized the film's running time: "Though the film is hardly laugh-free, its uneven jokes appear to have breezed through a very forgiving editing process." Joe Morgenstern of
The Wall Street Journal too found the film's length "exhausting," noting, "Some of it sputters, settling for smiles instead of laughs, and much of it flounders while the slapdash script searches [...] for ever more common denominators in toilet humor."
Accolades ==References==