The Guilt Trip with Barbra Streisand. A movie star since her enormously successful debut as entertainer Fanny Brice in the 1968 musical Funny Girl, Barbra Streisand has been a reliable box office draw in the last 45 years. Following Frank Pierson’s 1976 remake of A Star Is Born, Streisand’s film appearances became increasingly more sporadic; even so, her star vehicles remained solid commercial – if not necessarily critical – performers. That is, until The Guilt Trip, which pairs the now 70-year-old veteran with Seth Rogen. The $40 million production will have a tough time matching (no chance of recovering) its production costs at the domestic box office.
Barbra Streisand comeback The Guilt Trip bombs
The Guilt Trip star Barbra Streisand should have been a shoo-in for the 2013 Golden Globes in the Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy category. When Streisand failed to get nominated – despite a promo snafu claiming that she had been – it seemed clear that something was dead wrong with the Anne Fletcher-directed, mother-son road movie comedy costarring Seth Rogen.
Perhaps it’s a mere coincidence – totally unrelated to the Golden Globes, that is – but The Guilt Trip reviews have been generally pretty mediocre. Notwithstanding the presence of one of cinema’s (and pop culture’s) iconic figures of the late 20th century, Paramount’s $40 million production has a 48 percent approval rating and 5.9/10 average among Rotten Tomatoes’ top critics.
Unable to crack even the $10 million mark, The Guilt Trip ended up grossing a measly $7.3 million at 2,431 North American locations over the course of its first five days out (Dec. 19–23) – $5.3 million of which over the weekend (Fri.–Sun.). Its weekend per-theater average was an embarrassing $2,176.
Even with a 24 percent jump on the Nov. 28–30 weekend, The Guilt Trip averaged only $2,693 per site – or $6.5 million over the weekend, for a grand total of – a paltry – $21 million after 12 days.
Barbra Streisand: 1970s box office magnet
Barbra Streisand was a box office magnet in her heyday in the 1970s, a time when she was the only woman to be consistently found among Hollywood’s top box office draws.
Whether watchable (The Way We Were, For Pete’s Sake) or unwatchable (Funny Lady, A Star Is Born, The Main Event), her movies were nearly all major box office hits – Vincente Minnelli’s costly musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) and Irvin Kershner’s unusual, little-remembered comedy-drama Up the Sandbox (1972) were the two exceptions.
Here are a few examples of Streisand’s ’70s allure: What’s Up Doc? (1972), Funny Lady (1975), A Star Is Born (1976), and The Main Event (1979) took in, respectively, $66 million, $39 million, $80 million, and $42.8 million. That would translate into approximately $310 million, $150 million, $300 million, and $135 million in 2012 dollars.
Even On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which failed to recover its mammoth budget at the box office, took in $14 million at the beginning of the decade – the equivalent of about $70 million today.
The Guilt Trip will be very lucky if it reaches $30 million.
Spring 2013 update: The Guilt Trip reached $37.1 million in the U.S. and Canada.
Successful semi-retirement – until The Guilt Trip
Apart from one major commercial misfire – Jean-Claude Tramont’s 1981 romantic comedy-drama All Night Long[1], which actually stars Gene Hackman – Barbra Streisand’s sporadic film appearances since her 1970s heyday have all resulted in good-to-great box office figures.
These have ranged from showy leads (Yentl, Nuts, The Mirror Has Two Faces, the Oscar-nominated The Prince of Tides) to unworthy supporting roles (Meet the Fockers, Little Fockers).
So it’s more than a little shocking that The Guilt Trip – the two-time Oscar winner’s[2] first movie lead since The Mirror Has Two Faces back in 1996 – has been received so unenthusiastically by movie audiences.
One possibility is that they’ve been unaware The Guilt Trip even exists, as the buzz surrounding Streisand’s “movie star comeback” has been surprisingly muted.
Who knows, maybe Paramount, having neither forgiven nor forgotten On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, has decided it should instead spend its marketing moolah on Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher.
Martin Ritt’s 1987 psychological/courtroom drama Nuts is Streisand’s weakest-performing star vehicle to date, having grossed $30.95 million in 1987 – or the equivalent of about $60 million today.
The Guilt Trip cast
Besides Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen, The Guilt Trip features:
Adam Scott. Colin Hanks. Kathy Najimy. Dale Dickey. Miriam Margolyes. Brandon Keener. Brett Cullen. Ari Graynor.
Dan Fogelman (Cars, Cars 2, Tangled, Bolt, and the live-action Crazy, Stupid, Love) wrote the screenplay.
“The Guilt Trip Box Office” notes
All Night Long pay & Barbra Streisand Oscars
[1] With powerhouse agent Sue Mengers on her side, Barbra Streisand reportedly earned $4 million + 15 percent of the gross for her work in All Night Long. (See Frank Rose’s The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business.)
[2] Barbra Streisand’s two Academy Award wins: as Best Actress for her portrayal of early 20th-century entertainer Fanny Brice in William Wyler’s Funny Girl (1968; she tied with Katharine Hepburn for her portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Anthony Harvey’s The Lion in Winter) and as a composer (with lyricist Paul Williams) for the song “Evergreen” from A Star Is Born.
Information about Barbra Streisand’s All Night Long salary: Anne Edwards’ Streisand: A Biography.
Barbra Streisand The Guilt Trip image: Paramount Pictures.
*Last modified in May 2025.