Box office Gotti grossed $4.3 million in the United States, and $1.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $6.1 million, against a production budget of $10 million.
Gotti began its limited release in 503 theaters and was projected to make $1–2 million in its opening weekend. It made $105,000 from Thursday night previews at 350 theaters and a total of $1.7 million in its opening weekend, finishing 12th. According to their own reports, MoviePass accounted for 40% of tickets sold, leading one independent studio head to tell
Deadline Hollywood: "It used to be in distribution, we'd all gossip whether a studio was buying tickets to their own movie to goose their opening. But in the case of MoviePass, there's no secret: They're literally buying the tickets to their own movie!" In its second weekend the film dropped 53% and made $812,000, finishing 12th.
Critical response Gotti was not screened in advance for critics, but the Cannes premiere was attended by reviewers from
IndieWire and
The Hollywood Reporter, who both gave the film negative reviews. On the
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an
approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus simply reads, "
Fuhgeddaboudit". On
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 24 out of 100, based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Jordan Mintzer of
The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a negative review, writing: "it's not only that the film is pretty terrible: poorly written, devoid of tension, ridiculous in spots and just plain dull in others. But the fact that it mostly portrays John Gotti as a loving family man and altogether likable guy, and his son John Gotti Jr. as a victim of government persecution, may be a first in the history of the genre." The
New York Posts Johnny Oleksinski called the film "the worst mob movie of all-time" and wrote, "the long-awaited biopic about the Gambino crime boss' rise from
made man to top dog, took four directors, 44 producers and eight years to make. It shows. The finished product belongs in a cement bucket at the bottom of the river." Writing for
Rolling Stone,
Peter Travers gave the film one out of four stars and said, "Insane testimonials from Gotti supporters at the end are as close as this [film] will ever get to good reviews." Nick Schager, writing for
The Daily Beast, said that the film "validates the oft-heard criticism that mob movies invariably glorify their subjects", adding: "The film does its best to make sure Gotti comes off as a noble and ruthless warrior-leader who ... was good for the community because he only killed his own and kept a lid on neighborhood crime." He concluded: Listen to me, and listen to me good. You never gonna see another guy like me if you live to be five thousand,' Travolta's Teflon Don boasts in the final scene. With any luck, we'll never see another mob-movie misfire like this either."
Richard Roeper of the
Chicago Sun-Times was more positive in his review of the film, describing it as "an entertaining and well-acted but uneven B-movie."
Rotten Tomatoes rating discrepancy Observers were quick to note a large disparity on
Rotten Tomatoes, between the audience approval score of 80% and the 0% critics' score during the film's opening weekend. The audience score has since dropped 36 points to a score of 44%. Accusations against the production studio and marketing team increased after the release of a marketing push suspected to be trying to hit back at the critics. The campaign proclaimed to consumers to ignore the "trolls behind a keyboard", and "Audiences loved
Gotti but critics don't want you to see it ... The question is why??? Trust the people and see it for yourself!" Observers also noted the abnormally high number of reviews, 7000, compared to other films that did better at the box office that weekend, such as
Incredibles 2 which logged 7600 reviews and grossed 105 times more than
Gotti. Rotten Tomatoes staff issued a statement stating they did not find any evidence of tampering and that "All of the ratings and reviews were left by active accounts." In June 2018, it was noted that 32 of the 54 written reviews were found to be from first-time reviewers on the site, who had also only left a review for
Gotti itself, and 45 of the accounts were created the same month. Many of the accounts also wrote a review for the praised
American Animals, which along with
Gotti are the only films to be owned by
MoviePass through its company MoviePass Ventures, which was responsible for 40% of tickets sold. Jim Vorel of
Paste suggested this was done to try to prop up MoviePass's "unlimited movies" business model.
Accolades ==See also==