From Breakout Roles to a High-Profile Misfire
Jenna Ortega’s rise from child actor to cultural touchstone has been swift. Her turn as Wednesday Addams on Netflix and a role in the Beetlejuice legacy sequel helped cement her as one of Hollywood’s most talked-about young stars. But 2025 brought a sharper lesson in the unpredictability of fame: two theatrical releases that failed to connect with critics and audiences alike, most notably the Trey Edward Shults–directed thriller Hurry Up Tomorrow.
What Hurry Up Tomorrow Promised — and What It Delivered
Hurry Up Tomorrow marketed itself as a mind-bending, insomnia-tinged thriller centered on a musician (played by Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye) who is drawn into an unsettling odyssey with a stranger, a journey that gradually unspools his sense of self. The film’s creative team included Shults as director and co-writer, alongside Reza Fahim and The Weeknd; producers listed include Kevin Turen, The Weeknd, and Harrison Kreiss.
Despite the pedigree and star power, reviewers were almost uniformly harsh. On Rotten Tomatoes the film sits at a scalding 14%. The site’s one-liner summed the reaction bluntly: “On second thought, let’s fast-forward to the workweek.” In a review for Collider, Jeff Ewing highlighted recurring problems: characters lacking depth, repetitive story beats, and a film that doesn’t find its momentum until the final act.
Box Office: A Costly Shortfall
Hurry Up Tomorrow also floundered at the box office. With a reported production budget of $15 million, the film managed just $7.7 million in worldwide gross. It opened in over 2,000 U.S. theaters but the debut weekend was underwhelming enough that the film was pulled from most locations within two weeks. By its fourth weekend it was only playing in 124 theaters before reporting of theater data effectively ceased — a rapid commercial retreat.
The Streaming Rebound: Popular Where It Failed
In a turn that underscores the modern afterlife of theatrical flops, Hurry Up Tomorrow found a second act on streaming. In February it ranked among the ten most-streamed movies on Starz in the U.S., at one point sitting as the platform’s second-most-streamed title behind Nnamdi Asomugha’s 2025 drama The Knife. That kind of post-theatrical traction shows how a film’s fortunes can shift once it becomes easy to discover without the barrier of a ticket purchase.
Why Some Movies Thrive on Streamers Despite Critical Panning
Hurry Up Tomorrow’s streaming performance illustrates a broader pattern: films that underperform in theaters can still attract sizable audiences once available on-demand. Reasons often include:
- Star curiosity: High-profile names can draw viewers who want to judge a widely discussed project for themselves.
- Low commitment viewing: Streaming reduces the perceived time and financial cost of sampling a movie.
- Niche appeal: Elements like music-centric storytelling or a surreal tone can find pockets of enthusiastic viewers even if mainstream critics aren’t won over.
While those points help explain the film’s Starz metrics, they don’t erase the critical consensus that the movie underdelivered on its premise.
Where This Leaves Jenna Ortega
Hurry Up Tomorrow is currently the lowest-scoring project in Ortega’s on-screen career on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, one underperforming film is unlikely to define her trajectory. Ortega’s previous high-profile successes and ongoing visibility across film and TV give her a buffer that many young actors lack. The streaming interest in Hurry Up Tomorrow may be a small, welcome counterweight to its critical and box office disappointments, but it does not change the shortcomings highlighted by critics.
Film Snapshot
- Title: Hurry Up Tomorrow
- Release Date: May 16, 2025
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Rating: R
- Genre: Thriller / Music
- Director: Trey Edward Shults
- Writers: Reza Fahim, Trey Edward Shults, The Weeknd
- Producers: Kevin Turen, The Weeknd, Harrison Kreiss
- Box Office: $7.7 million worldwide (reported)
- Reported Budget: $15 million
- Rotten Tomatoes: 14% (at time of reporting)
- Streaming: Among top ten most-streamed movies on Starz (U.S.), February
Bottom Line
Hurry Up Tomorrow is a reminder that star power and a provocative premise alone don’t guarantee critical or commercial success. Yet in the streaming era, a film’s lifespan and audience can be surprisingly elastic. For Ortega, the episode is a blip rather than a derailment — and for viewers, it’s another example of how movies can find unexpected life after the box office curtain falls.