Willem Dafoe Says Record-Breaking U.S. Box Office Should Be ‘Spread Out a Little Bit’: ‘The Audience Comes Mainly From Three Huge Movies’

Willem Dafoe, who is at the Zurich Film Festival presenting the opening night film “Tenzing,” spoke about the record-breaking 2026 box office while emphasizing the importance of watching the Jennifer Peedom epic in cinemas. The film, which opened to warm Zurich audiences last night, will have a limited theatrical release in the U.S. from Oct. 9 ahead of its global streaming debut on Apple TV on Oct. 16.

“The only problem is that the audience comes mainly from three, four huge movies,” he said of this year’s record-breaking $4.76 billion U.S. summer box office, driven largely by Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” “A couple of smaller movies kind of catch on and do well, but it’s got to be spread out a little bit.”

Dafoe himself is perhaps one of the actors who best treads the line between blockbusters and small festival darlings, having appeared in Sam Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” back in 2002 as well as collaborating with now-renowned auteurs early in their careers, such as Sean Baker, Wes Anderson, Yorgos Lanthimos and Robert Eggers.

Speaking about his turn in the comic book world, Dafoe said he became a part of it at the “start of business-as-normal making movies from comic books.” “When I was proposed this role, some of my friends were like: ‘Are you kidding? Are you going to play this green guy? That’s not cool! That sounds like a terrible movie!’”

“I was not a big comic book fan; I didn’t know about this world, but Sam Raimi did,” he added. “I saw his attachment to it and saw how he saw it. I liked him so much that he really is what got me into it. Once I was in it, I had really fun things to do.”

The actor said he “had done some movies that had found success” but that, to this day, the most consistent point of recognition from audiences is “probably the Green Goblin.” “For better or for worse,” he said. “Luckily, I do other things so I am not haunted by this mono-identity, but it’s pretty strong.”

Dafoe enjoyed his experience in the Marvel Cinematic Universe both in the 2002 film and during his return as Green Goblin on “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” “They’re part of cinema. They are right up there with Bela Tarr,” he quipped.

“Tenzing” chronicles the story of the first-ever ascent of Mount Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, played by Genden Phuntsok and Tom Hiddleston, respectively. Dafoe plays Colonel John Hunt, the leader of the 1953 British expedition team. Commenting on the experience of shooting on real mountains at high altitude, Dafoe said the entire film team had to be “very careful.”

“We had great safety people,” he noted. “They’re checking for avalanches, for all sorts of things. There are 10 guys purely helping us slip in and making sure we’re safe, helping us if we struggle […] That’s the tension. Nature is the biggest partner you’ll have because it tells you what you have to do. There is no invented world. It’s a world that really exists; you’re not questioning [its] authenticity. You’re definitely on this mountain, and you’re definitely having a little hard time breathing, or you’re fatigued, or you’re hungry, or you have to go to the toilet, and there’s no toilet there… All kinds of challenges and, on top of that, you’ve got the scenes.”