As great as I found director Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, nothing about its box office failure is surprising. And it is not only a failure; it is a shocking failure for box office analysts who projected an opening as high as $25 million with a $15 million worst case.
Well, as of this morning, the groomers at the Disney Grooming Syndicate are wishing that worst-case scenario had come about, because Deliver Me from Nowhere is staring into the abyss of a pathetic $9 million weekend debut and a humiliating fourth-place finish.
According to various reports, Nowhere cost $60 million to produce, at least another $50 million to promote, which means Disney will need to gross at least $200 million worldwide just to break even
That ain’t happening.
So, what did happen? How did a biopic about Freddie Mercury gross almost $1 billion worldwide? Bob Dylan’s biopic grossed $140 million. Elton John hit $195 million. Springsteen will be lucky to gross half of Dylan’s $140 million worldwide.
Bruce Springsteen and Jeremy Allen White at the 2025 AFI Fest – Opening Night Gala Premiere of “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” at TCL Chinese Theatre on October 22, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
Well, as I said, the failure isn’t surprising.
To begin with, Deliver Me From Nowhere is not a jukebox musical. People know this is not a greatest hits biopic, and people want to hear the greatest hits. What’s more, the one album Nowhere does cover, 1982’s Nebraska, doesn’t have any hits. It’s a stripped-down, dark, and dreary folk album. Springsteen fans love Nebraska, which brings me to the next problem… The major one…
Bruce Springsteen has not been Bruce Springsteen for a long, long time. A massive part of his fan base was made up of the working class. The men who raced in the streets, worked in the factories, lived on the margins, counted the days till Friday and payday, and kept our world turning with their dirty hands and broken dreams…
Springsteen became a billionaire superstar, telling those guys, I get you, I empathize, so I got something for you. Okay, it’s only three-and-a-half minutes, but if you turn up the volume, roll down the windows, and let your hair flow back, you’ll feel the magic in the night and forget all about that Monday morning work whistle.
That guy, that Bruce Springsteen, couldn’t fail. But then he turned on his fans and sold out. As their factories went overseas and a flood of illegal aliens stole their jobs, crushed their wages, and raised their rents, those guys dared to stop voting the way The Boss demanded, so he stabbed them in the back—he declared them fascist and racist because they voted for Donald Trump.
Bruce went full-elitist. He meets Barry Obama for lunch now (the guy who called us bitter clingers), defends his concert tickets selling for thousands of dollars, and entertains only the “correct-thinking” elite on Broadway. And now he sees his own fan base as shit. He’s too good for us, and has made no secret of saying so.
The fans didn’t leave Springsteen. Springsteen left his fans.
Many of his former fans are so disgusted with his betrayal; they can’t even bring themselves to listen to the old music. You see, they just don’t see him as their guy anymore. They see a poser, a fraud, as someone who used them to get rich and welcomed by the Beautiful People, and now everything he touched is tainted, even those first six albums that were once so much a part of our lives. So…
Give up two hours to watch his movie…?
Why make a rich guy richer who hates you?
That ain’t happening.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
