Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” has not been an easy release.

Postponed for over a year, the triptych film opened last Friday in just 52 theaters and headed into a steady decline. Every single day since the opening the numbers went down. Yesterday, Thursday, saw a drop of over 81% in 6 days, from $556K to $102k.

Yikes.

Despite this, Searchlight is taking a Hail Mary pass and expanding the all-star experience to 788 theaters this weekend. Will it work? Will audiences flock to a movie that some critics openly hated and preview audiences walked out of?

Here’s the deal if you’re a Wes Anderson fan and are on the fence about “The French Dispatch”: it’s three separate stories. The only through line is that Bill Murray runs a kind of faux-twee French based version of The New Yorker. He’s in the movie a little bit, and Elisabeth Moss even less. I really liked first chapter, with Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, and Tilda Swinton.

But the next two chapters, while amusing and cast with celebrities, become mired in diminishing returns. By the end you’ll need a cappuccino. Which isn’t it say that the production values aren’t as high as possible and completely original. It’s a worthwhile project. But it’s not up to Anderson’s best work. Here’s hoping his next one is more cohesive.

PS Searchlight, which won the last couple of Best Picture Oscars with “Nomadland” and “The Shape of Water,” may not be in the hunt this year. “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” didn’t cut it, and “French Dispatch” will merit art noms only. Their last card is the Guillermo del Toro horror film, “Nightmare Alley,” which everyone is crossing fingers for.

The trashing of Bruce Willis’s legacy, whatever that was, continues apace.

His latest is a D movie going straight to video and to airplanes called “Deadlocked.” Bruce, once the highest paid movie star in the world, now gets second billing to former soap star Patrick Muldoon. (Muldoon takes the place here of fill in the blank Frank Grillo, Chad Michael Murray, whatever younger failed soap star turned action hero is available. It’s the formula.)

“Deadlock” is directed by Jared Cohn, who has a decade’s worth of credits for movies no one has ever heard of. In the trailer, Bruce says little and doesn’t move around much. It looks like all his work was done in one day and cut up into various scenes. Otherwise they use a stand in. I’m not sure if Bruce has any idea what’s going on, and it’s getting worse.

“Deadlock” has no fewer than 17 Executive Producers! And three more people with producer credits (they probably did the work). One of the EPs is of course Stephen J. Eads, who I’m starting to wonder about. And so should Bruce’s wife, Emma, and his wife, Demi Moore. There are now trashbins full of these things. There are no fewer than 10– TEN– more coming soon!