The Uprising Budget

What Is the Budget of The Uprising?

Paul Greengrass's The Uprising has not had its production budget publicly disclosed by Focus Features, Blumhouse Productions, or any of its financing partners as of its September 2026 release. What is known is the film's opening result: The Uprising grossed $3,250,000 in its first three days (September 11 to 13, 2026) from 2,068 domestic theaters, a modest debut for a large-scale medieval war epic starring Andrew Garfield.

Focus Features acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film in a deal reported at approximately $11,000,000 in May 2025, before the title was finalized. That figure reflects the cost of buying distribution rights, not the film's actual production spend, and it should not be read as the film's budget.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

Without a disclosed production budget, the film's confirmed cost drivers are these:

• Above-the-Line Talent and Filmmaking Team: Andrew Garfield leads an ensemble cast that includes Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis and Thomasin McKenzie, with Paul Greengrass writing, directing and producing.
• Large-Scale Practical Production in Germany: up to 5,000 extras filled crowd and battle scenes across Bavaria's Franconia region, with location and crew costs standing in for what would otherwise be a UK shoot.
• Practical Battle Choreography and Handheld Cinematography: cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth shot the film's large-scale battle sequences using Greengrass's signature handheld camera style, a practical, in-camera approach rather than heavy postproduction compositing.
• Historical Production Design Across Real Locations: rather than building 14th-century England on a backlot, the production used Nuremberg's Old Town, Lichtenau Fortress, the town of Bad Windsheim and the Franconian Open-Air Museum as standing sets, supplemented by soundstage work at Penzing Studios near Munich.
• Distribution and Marketing by Focus Features: the studio's reported $11,000,000 rights acquisition and its wide 2,068-theater September release strategy, including a brief rebrand of the film's marketing around a Robin Hood angle, represent a distinct cost layer from the production itself.

How Does The Uprising's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

With no confirmed production budget for The Uprising, the clearest comparisons come from Paul Greengrass's own filmography and from the genre's biggest medieval-uprising precedent:

• Captain Phillips (2013): $55,000,000 budget | Worldwide $218,791,811. Greengrass's biggest true-story hit shows what his handheld, journalistic style can return commercially when reviews are strong, a bar The Uprising's more mixed reception falls well short of.
• News of the World (2020): $38,000,000 budget | Worldwide $12,700,000. Greengrass's most recent historical drama before this one also opened softly and lost money theatrically, suggesting his post-Bourne dramas have struggled commercially outside true-crime thrillers.
• Braveheart (1995): $72,000,000 budget | Worldwide $213,216,216. The genre's commercial high point for a medieval uprising-against-the-crown epic, and the direct comparison Greengrass himself invited, saying he set out to make a big historical epic "a bit like Gladiator or Braveheart."
• 22 July (2018): $20,000,000 budget | Worldwide box office not publicly available. Greengrass's most recent film dramatizing a real uprising against injustice before this one went straight to Netflix rather than a wide theatrical run, a path Focus Features chose not to repeat with The Uprising.

The Uprising Box Office Performance

The Uprising opened wide on September 11, 2026, playing in 2,068 domestic theaters alongside the specialty releases of Hope and Black Zombie. Its three-day opening weekend, Friday's $1,390,000, Saturday's $1,140,000 and Sunday's $720,000, totaled $3,250,000, a per-theater average of roughly $1,571. It marked Andrew Garfield's second soft wide release of 2026, following The Magic Faraway Tree's $1,300,000 debut in August. As of this total, that opening weekend gross is also the film's cumulative gross to date; Focus Features has not yet reported an international box office figure.

Against Greengrass's other true-story dramas, the opening is closer to News of the World's soft $12.7 million lifetime worldwide total than to Captain Phillips' $218.8 million, though The Uprising's eventual total will depend heavily on specialty and awards-corridor holdover play through the fall, plus whatever international rollout Focus Features and its European partners announce in the weeks ahead.

No per-dollar return can be calculated for The Uprising, because its production budget has not been made public.

The Uprising Production History

Development on The Uprising stretched across more than three years and two prior titles. Paul Greengrass's script was first announced in May 2022 under the title The Hood, with Benedict Cumberbatch attached to star; that iteration did not move forward. The project resurfaced in February 2025 as The Rage, with Matthew McConaughey set for the lead before he departed. Andrew Garfield entered negotiations to star in May 2025, and the film was retitled The Uprising by October 2025.

The film is a Blumhouse Productions title, a notable departure for a company built on horror franchises like Paranormal Activity, The Purge and Get Out. Greengrass has said producer Jason Blum simply encouraged the filmmakers to make the film they wanted, describing his ambition as a big historical epic "with a lot of heart and soul, a bit like Gladiator or Braveheart." Supernix, Thank You Pictures, Atomic Monster, Electric Shadow Company and FilmNation Entertainment also produced, on a UK-Germany-US co-production financed in part through Focus Features, which acquired U.S. distribution rights in a deal reported at roughly $11,000,000 in May 2025.

Principal photography ran from September through December 2025, filmed entirely in Bavaria, Germany, standing in for 14th-century England; Greengrass's team never filmed in the United Kingdom. Locations included Nuremberg's Old Town, Lichtenau Fortress, the town of Bad Windsheim and the Franconian Open-Air Museum, with soundstage work at Penzing Studios near Munich. Up to 5,000 extras filled the film's crowd and battle scenes. Cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth shot the large-scale battle sequences in Greengrass's signature handheld style, and composer Volker Bertelmann scored the film.

Focus Features set The Uprising for a September 11, 2026 wide release. Close to that date, marketing materials briefly carried the subtitle The Uprising: The Rise of Robin Hood, tying the film explicitly to the outlaw legend it dramatizes; the subtitle was withdrawn after backlash from audiences who felt it spoiled the film's own third-act turn.

Awards and Recognition

The Uprising has not received any awards nominations as of this writing, having opened in theaters on September 11, 2026, just days before this page was last updated. The film did not screen at the Venice, Toronto or Telluride festivals ahead of its release, and no critics' groups or precursor awards bodies had named it in nominations at the time of publication.

Its clearest recognition to date is commercial rather than critical: it earned a B- CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences, a middling grade that reflects a divided reaction rather than outright rejection.

Critical Reception

Reviews for The Uprising were mixed on release, with critics broadly agreeing that Andrew Garfield's performance and the film's brutal battle sequences outpaced its script and framing. The film holds a 53% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 66 critics (average score 6/10) and a 56 out of 100 on Metacritic, putting it just below Greengrass's Jason Bourne (55% on Rotten Tomatoes) as one of the more divisive entries in the director's filmography.

RogerEbert.com praised the film's visceral immediacy, writing that "the battle scenes are intense and violent, with Greengrass's signature handheld shaky-cam style bringing an almost uncomfortably brutal immediacy to these moments." Frank Scheck at The Hollywood Reporter credited cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth's work for fully immersing viewers in the action, while Next Best Picture's Matt Neglia agreed the shaky, handheld camera "works well for the action scenes," even as other critics found the same technique distracting during the film's quieter, character-driven passages.

The most consistent complaint targeted the film's ending. After late marketing briefly rebranded the film The Uprising: The Rise of Robin Hood, critics who saw the twist coming called the epilogue, which closes on a bow, an arrow and a conspicuous amount of green clothing, a "tragic rug pull" that undercut the historical drama preceding it. Others found the note more earned, arguing the ending allows audiences to leave the theater feeling "riled up rather than hopeless" about the 1381 revolt's ultimate defeat. Audiences skewed friendlier than critics, giving the film a B- CinemaScore and a 65% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.