Very glad to see After Yang on both of your lists! I haven't seen it pop up on too many of these, and it's an exceptionally moving, singular film. It was disappointing to see that even in NYC, it screened in only 1 or 2 theaters. It's visually stunning and seemed well suited for at least a larger arthouse release.
I would also like to be included in the “EEAAO was good not great” camp. The film sheds a lot of the importance of its multiverse and sci-fi plots as it ramps into its climax. *SPOILERS* It reduces itself to scenes of her making amends to each family member. *END SPOILER* But its not like the climax is terrible! I had a fun time! It was a great ride, I liked it enough! 🤷♂️
I think people are missing something in the OH GOD THE BOX OFFICE DISASTER takes: we're in a particularly Heavens Gatey era right now, for some reason.
Why was Babylon given 100 million and then (apparently) does everything it can during the first reel to dare people to leave the theater?
Why is Spielberg making movies that recreate his childhood? I liked West Side Story a lot and I *loved* The Fabelmans but neither are broadly commercial compared to his past hits
Why is Nightmare Alley 150 minutes long and grotesquely gore-filled?
Why is Tar 160 minutes long as a character study?
Banshees of Inishirin is terrific but it's far less commercial than In Bruges and 3BB
These movies would be unlikely to be hits in ANY era.
Basically, we're living in a world where there are...
-big giant IP blockbusters which are succeeding
-directors being given blank checks for personal, esoteric, off-putting movies that are not connecting with audiences
-Middle of the road movies like Where the Crawdads Sing and Bullet Train that no one writes about.
Why is no one focusing on point 3? Crawdads made 80m on 24m. Black Phone and Violent Night did fine. But oh no, the 60-on-RT, punishingly long, divisive, nonsensical-trailer Babylon failed!! Well yeah, so did Heavens Gate.
We don't need more Tars to save theaters (and Tar will be in my Top 5). We need some Beverly Hills Cops
Beverly Hills Cop was the biggest movie of the year at the domestic box office and marked the moment when a generational talent became the most famous person in the world. Hollywood would make nothing but Beverly Hills Cops headlined by nothing but Eddie Murphys and spend all year crashing them into one another like Matchbox cars if there were any way to plan for something like that.
Things like Where the Crawdads Sing and Bullet Train got on base by the skin of their teeth but neither seems like a promising path forward to me. Crawdads drafted behind its source material’s former popularity and prestige so people showed up despite the lousy reviews--it was not supposed to be a Nicholas Sparks movie, but that’s what we got. The 90 million dollar Bullet Train really should have made a bit more money, but more distressingly it’s built out of deadstock parts like Brad Pitt and a hard R rating that seem to be permanently out of manufacture. It’s a whole cast of great actors who will never be Brad Pitt famous--and consequently won’t headline any 90 million dollar non-IP R-rated action movies--because they didn’t have the chance to make movies in the 90s when there was still an incentive to foster a movie star’s career.
I’d bet that Black Phone wound up being way more profitable than Bullet Train, but nobody is worried about Blumhouse or the nifty and modest genre movies they make drying up and blowing away. They aren’t resource-intensive and one hit pays for 20 misses. If you want to make money, you make those. If you want to make Big Tech money, you make some IP pabulum. You only make Bullet Train if you want to be in business with Brad Pitt for the sake of Pitt, and they just don’t make them like him anymore.
Beverly Hills Cop was a 13m movie (38m in today's money) that used the third or fourth star who showed up for the role. You would indeed think that Hollywood would make nothing but such movies but they demonstrably don't. How many mid-budget movies aimed at being entertaining to wide swathes of America do you see right now?
And if Bullet Train was just !!BRAD PITT!! than Babylon would have done 100m, right? The difference is that Bullet Train is a movie that looked entertaining. Virtually nothing from the last few months LOOKS entertaining. Even The Fabelmans' trailer is all about magic of cinema rather than this is an enjoyable, bittersweet coming of age movie. Make movies people want to see. Crawdads is up to 124m worldwide on a 24m budget with no stars whatsoever. Because people wanted to see it.
All interesting thoughts from both y'all. We should definitely write off CRAWDADS as a source-fueled phenomenon. That book was a huge deal, and the pre-release buzz about the author wanted for questioning in Africa probably helped rather than hindered its box office. (I saw the film in a mixed public/press screening and the public folks were absolutely thrilled with it.)
I think James is right here about some of these big movies not seeming very entertaining to audiences. BABYLON and FABELMANS would be tough sells under any circumstances, but I do think the latter would have hooked audiences had they walked through the doors. They just didn't. The HEAVEN'S GATE comparison fascinates me, too. It almost feels like name directors are gobbling up budgets from whatever streaming service is desperate enough to bid for them and then burning them on uncommercial work (e.g. WHITE NOISE, BARDO, BABYLON). Noble but not sustainable.
It's a 2.5 hour film about a Jewish family. I mean, Avalon didn't clean up at the box office either. Brighton Beach Memoirs is more of a comedy than Avalon or Fabelmans but it was not a hit either.
And I say this as someone who has The Fabelmans as my #1 film in 2022 and have urged friends to see it.
Agreed. Of all the prestige-y Hollywood films this season, The Fabelmans was the one I felt most comfortable recommending to regular folks like my family members. But then... how do you sell them on it? I struggled to get them excited. Neither the Spielberg filmmaking origin story nor the drama about a rocky marriage are all that hooky, much as those elements play out together so beautifully in the film. I guess we can just be glad it was made and move on!
aside from the Hanukkah scenes at the beginning and the anti-semitic bullying at the high school, and Judd Hirsch's entire scene.... ok, it's pretty jewish, I guess. but doesn't every movie about a quirky family have some details that people will find foreign? it's not something I thought about at all while watching it.
I'd honestly compare it to something like The Ice Storm, which was pretty highly acclaimed and popular in an art-house sense, and (according to wikipedia) only grossed $8m?? in '97! so is it really doing so bad?
When I was reading James’s Heaven’s Gate comparison it struck me as unexpected, inevitable, and spot-on. I don’t think people expected a straight-A student like Chazelle to turn in such an assaultive piece of work, and consequently he seems to have burned a lot of goodwill in addition to a mountain of cash. I’m a pretty big fan, but his next movie will probably be somewhat deformed by the reception this one got.
It’s really too bad that Fabelmans was hard to market. The trailer made it look like a crass parade of Spielbergian tics rather than the mature apotheosis of them. People will see it eventually, and they’ll love it, and this Spielberg kid is gonna be just fine, but I’m nervous that there are now several generations of directors underneath him who aren’t going to get the opportunities to make movies like that anymore because audiences just don’t show up for them. Hollywood used to be a place for transforming money into prestige which you could then use to get more money. Now the money is the prestige and the cohort of executives running the place don’t seem to enjoy movies at all.
Right, but the thing to worry about is that Crawdads scored big at the box office and STILL doesn’t have any movie stars in it. Did it really generate any momentum outside of itself? Is it Daisy Edgar-Jones’s A River Runs Through It moment, or is it a financially successful one-off that mined some coin out of some popular source material before evaporating from the popular consciousness?
I’m not saying Bullet Train’s receipts are attributable solely to Pitt--he’s surprisingly inconsistent as a pure box office draw, all-told--but rather that Bullet Train (or Babylon, or Ad Astra) exists in the first place because of his well-earned cachet, which is an increasingly rare commodity in film.
You’re 100% right that people saw it because it looked fun, but it troubles me that despite best practices being followed by all involved and a killer trailer it only managed 100 million domestic. It’s a break-even proposition that will be marginally profitable after the last bean is counted, which is not really what Hollywood does anymore.
I think the prevailing theme here is the collapse of the star system. A movie like Ticket To Paradise certainly benefited from old stars likes Clooney/Roberts-- god knows, it had nothing much to offer besides that-- but Daisy Edgar-Jones isn't a bankable star (or even known by many people who saw Crawdads, I bet) and even Pitt's success is movie-dependent. Few are going to see a film like Babylon on faith, but they'll turn out for Bullet Train because it looks like a bunch of badasses fighting on a fast-moving train.
Clooney is also the most obvious analogue to Pitt as someone who can get a movie with a decent budget made (or at least up until recently could) based far more on Clout than on consistent box office.
I do think that we're not in some sort of 'never again' movie star scenario though - it'll work differently than it has in the past but fully believe there is a generational switchover which will eventually lead us to a whole lot of new gen. top draws.
Side thought - do we consider Daniel Craig to be a Pitt-level star at this point? With all that Bond boost, he certainly helped make the first Knives Out a big success.
Re: stars, I would be interested to see one of the Stranger Things kids headline a major studio release to see if their Netflix popularity carries over. David Harbour did all right with the admittedly high concept Violent Night.
Harbour in Violent Night is an interesting case. He clearly has the attention and loyalty of his audience and he was able to leverage it to bring extra eyes to a Blumhouse-style potboiler. I bet Jon Hamm
"Steven Spielberg’s 2021 “West Side Story” remake was a box-office disappointment with $76 million worldwide, a rare miss for the all-time box office king. After “The Fabelmans,” it’s less rare: After four weeks in theaters, Spielberg’s film grossed $6 million domestic."
No doubt that Spielberg did make a personal film, but damn, that is a cliff-worthy drop. Has to be his worst performing movie, ever, no?
I don't know about you guys, but I would not go see You Can Count on Me in the theater if it came out this year. I love that film to death, but it is a movie that was on the big screen because there was no streaming/cheap HD back in 2000.
It is interesting to see the domestic box office numbers of small Oscar movies. Like In the Bedroom cleared about $36mil back in 2001; Brooklyn in 2015 cleared around $38mil. Counting for inflation, that's a sizable fall. Licorice Pizza only cleared $17mil last year.
I would absolutely see You Can Count On me in the theater. I love seeing a movie in a theater, and it doesn't have to be spectacle to me (and yeah, I saw Tar, Banshees, Armageddon Time, White Noise, and much more in theaters the past few months).
My running joke is Tar would've done better if they'd named her Ava Tar and made that the title and siphoned some box office away from confused Avatar fans (awaits ban from future comments for pun crimes).
I think 2022 offered more reasons for optimism about the future of theaters than you're giving it credit for. Sure, Avatar 2, Top Gun 2, and Black Panther 2 all cleaned up, but lots of other kinds of movies found varying levels of unexpected and encouraging success in theaters as well: Barbarian, Smile, Where the Crawdads Sing, Elvis, Nope, The Woman King, Don't Worry Darling, Bullet Train, Pearl, Terrifier 2, and (of course) Everything Everywhere All At Once. I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting as well. None of those movies were sure things and none of them cost more than $90 million dollars (most cost much less), but people still came out to see them. Hell, at least two of those (Smile and Barbarian) were made for streaming and got theatrical releases after testing well. To me, that demonstrates that studios still at least have some investment in theaters.
The other reason for optimism is Black Phone, Crawdads, Bullet Train, Ticket, Everywhere all slowly kept padding their box office totals. I never thought Bullet would clear $100M or Crawdads or Phone would clear $90M based on their opening weekends, but they kept going, I think in large part b/c studios were releasing so little in theaters. I think that means people WANT to go to the theaters, you have just have to give them a reason to and actually put movies in theaters they think might entertain them.
2019 saw a lot of original films clearing $100M (Knives Out, Ford v. Ferrari, Hustlers, Us, 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). I'm aware of the pandemic, but i don't think people just suddenly lost all appetite for original fare. I think we just saw a year where filmmakers released a 2 hr 40 minute movie with a title like Tar that features long discussions of classical music, a movie about a guy so depressed he starts chopping off his fingers, a film with an asshole child lead set in maybe the dreariest ever depiction of the early 1980s, a movie about sexual assaults in an isolated religious community, a 3 hour plus film about old Hollywood history that aggressively tries to alienate its audience in the first 10 minutes....And the trailers don't do the movies any favors, the worst being the only trailer of Till I saw in a theater featuring a lot of interviews with director and cast telling me how important the movie was.
And FWIW, I liked Tar a lot, thought Babylon was flawed but fascinating (sadly it's at its weakest when it tries to shock) would classify Banshees and Armageddon good, and have not seen Till (Women Talking hasn't opened in my city yet).
One of the only things I miss about being on Twitter is missing little bits of news like DISAPPOINTMENT BLVD. being renamed BEAU IS AFRAID, and spending a couple days wondering if the former had been shelved before I get around to Googling it. (DB was always hyped as a comedy instead of a horror, so the rebranding and re-genreing is perplexing - desperate marketing, or accurate description of the final product?)
I mean, it kinda sounds like Aster in MIDSOMMAR mode, right? Surreal horror-comedy. I choose to be optimistic, though I've heard it's going to be on the long-ish side?
do I just not connect with McDonagh? I enjoyed BoI quite a bit: it's very funny, very bleak, there's some great acting and there's beautiful scenery.... but it didn't move me. We got to the climax and it felt extremely similar to the ending to Three Billboards. Like, it felt copied. Again, really good film, but I don't get the love it has seen.
But then again (and I know I've already disagreed about this with you previously, Scott) I don't get the love for Kimi this year. Is it because Soderbergh doesn't speak to me? I feel the constant comparisons to 70's paranoia classics like The Conversation did it a disservice, because it's only superficially like those movies: we know very very quickly that our protagonist isn't imagining anything. It was very enjoyable and spry, but nothing more than that to me. (and having watched Run, Lola, Run for the podcast, it pales in comparison. Kimi's script needed some polishing, but that's something I not infrequently think of Soderbergh's work)
I'm with you generally in thinking Soderbergh's films tend to be a tad underbaked-- if consistently compelling-- but KIMI had so much dexterity. Heavy themes but all done with a lightness of touch.
I’m hopelessly in the bag for Mcdonagh but I can see finding him a bit remote. The emotional responses he pulls out of me are usually related more to his formal approach--the symmetries, the sharp left turns, the compositional rigor of the dialogue, basically the virtuosity on display--than any kind of human exchange with what the characters are feeling. Three Billboards would be the exception, but that is a complicated movie to defend and potentially a dangerous one to connect to. Do any of his movies work better for you than others?
ok, let's talk theaters! I, too, saw Glass Onion in it's theatrical release and can't understand how Netflix didn't have a plan in place to extend it's run if it was successful
But how are we judging theatrical success in a world in which movies are release streaming same day or within a month? in which studios don't seem to know how to market to people who don't head to the theater every week? in which we have no idea how much revenue these movies are driving for their streaming-service owners?
Avatar has, despite all expectations, gotten decent critical attention. It did not flop. but is it a wild success? (maybe you know the money it's pulling down and know it is) I will say that I do not know a single person who is not a film critic that has seen it. I'm glad people think it's impressive, but it doesn't seem to be drawing people in my circles.
Is Fabelmans a failure? It's not performing up to "spielbergian" standards, but what *should* a period coming of age film with no supernatural features be expected to do? It's still playing in my area and there was a decent crowd over the holidays? maybe it's still performing? (thought I do think they botched the advertising and rollout for that one)
we know blockbusters will continue to bring people to the theater. but unfortunately I think we still don't know what else might draw them. (myself, a theater enthusiast, included. when viewing windows are short and you know something will immediately be on streaming, it can be hard to prioritize going out exactly when the film is available. we've been spoiled)
Netflix really blew it with Glass Onion. I think I understand their business model, it makes sense in a McKinsey management consulting sort of way, but here on the ground it seems to me like people who saw it in theaters loved it and the Netflix release met with a far more tepid response. It’s not just selection bias that the big fans ran out to see it asap, it’s that it very purposefully frustrates and manipulates you. Seeing it with an audience whose lightbulbs are turning on at different intervals really helps you dismiss that discomfort and get swept away. Twitter says “the smashing went on too long” but the audience I was with knew a good rake joke when they saw one and were howling the entire time.
Anecdotally I’ve been hearing a lot of “the first half was too slow so I watched it in two parts” from my movie friends, which is certainly their prerogative but also wow, way to deflate the souffle.
I mean, you can assume that folks who did whatever they could to see Glass Onion in its very short release window were the folks most likely to really, really love it. You can also assume that NF makes more money having it in their system with some 'was briefly in theaters' buzz rather than a longer theatrical release which eats heavily into their huge investment.
Yeah, I don't think they're getting $100M in new subscribers by putting it on Netflix, but I think it would've made $100M if it had a real theatrical release (nor do I think they lose $100M in subscribers if they left it in theaters for a month or two).
Because I'm an idiot, I saw every wide release in 2022 and the real problem I see is the studios taking whole months off from releasing any major titles. Between Bullet Train and Black Adam, there were no studio movies aimed at a wide audience. A couple horror titles like Barbarian and Smile and arthouse movies that should have platformed like 3,000 Years of Longing. When commercial movies like Glass Onion, Prey, and Turning Red are dumped on a streaming service during otherwise barren times like those at the box office, you're training general audiences to not even check their local listings.
This is a great point. It feels like part of the theatrical ecosystem is missing, and a lot of features that should've been mid-budget success stories are still being shunted to streaming. There's just not enough variety to get people back into the groove of going to the theater. Confess Fletch should be up on that list -- with decent marketing and wide release, that should've done well.
I'll be curious to see if the drying up of streaming $ in 2023 causes any shift back. At the very least situations like Glass Onion and Prey where a streamer is obviously leaving money on the table seem less likely.
The Confess, Fletch release strategy was truly a worst of both worlds scenario. I saw it in a totally empty theater on a Sunday afternoon. A limited release for that movie makes absolutely no sense. And when it comes to streaming, it's a Showtime exclusive? Baffling.
What bothers me about Confess, Fletch is that no major studio will make another movie like it ever again even though it’s a good and sturdy piece of work that pleased whatever audience found it. It’s a clever and charismatic and seductively sleepy piece of work that makes you feel like life is fine while you’re watching it, so it’s exactly the naptime-adjacent cable TV classic its makers were aiming for. It lives and breathes the scruffy, amiable, and smart unambitiousness of its hero.
There’s no way to make that kind of movie anymore unless some benevolent dads like Mottola and Hamm cough up a bunch of cash and give us another one for free. I really hope they get to do it again, but I already appreciate their largesse in paying for this one. It’s a remarkably uncynical movie, and their lowkey and well-earned pride shines off the screen.
Yeah, I think Netflix and Hulu both could've had $100M domestic grossers if they had given them real theatrical releases. And while streamers are very guarded about their numbers, I'm skeptical if they made that much in new subscribers from having it on their service.
"Is there a place for simply liking Everything Everywhere All at Once with mild reservations?" Scott, if you ever find this place, please post directions, because I want to go to there.
I'm not sure if you'll see this, Scott, but I would love an article that untangles Steven Soderbergh's prolific output. I haven't seen several of his films of the last decade, and wonder which are worth watching.
Thanks for the reply! Maybe if you ever start a feature here in the vein of Career View from The Dissolve. Otherwise, perhaps keeping it limited to his works under a specific budget limit would help. I mean, people are already pretty well informed about Erin Brockovich, Traffic, or the Ocean's and Magic Mike movies.
Very glad to see After Yang on both of your lists! I haven't seen it pop up on too many of these, and it's an exceptionally moving, singular film. It was disappointing to see that even in NYC, it screened in only 1 or 2 theaters. It's visually stunning and seemed well suited for at least a larger arthouse release.
I would also like to be included in the “EEAAO was good not great” camp. The film sheds a lot of the importance of its multiverse and sci-fi plots as it ramps into its climax. *SPOILERS* It reduces itself to scenes of her making amends to each family member. *END SPOILER* But its not like the climax is terrible! I had a fun time! It was a great ride, I liked it enough! 🤷♂️
No Everything Everywhere All at Once, Scott? Zero credibility! You're through!
Oh dammit! We're going to shed subscribers now!
I think people are missing something in the OH GOD THE BOX OFFICE DISASTER takes: we're in a particularly Heavens Gatey era right now, for some reason.
Why was Babylon given 100 million and then (apparently) does everything it can during the first reel to dare people to leave the theater?
Why is Spielberg making movies that recreate his childhood? I liked West Side Story a lot and I *loved* The Fabelmans but neither are broadly commercial compared to his past hits
Why is Nightmare Alley 150 minutes long and grotesquely gore-filled?
Why is Tar 160 minutes long as a character study?
Banshees of Inishirin is terrific but it's far less commercial than In Bruges and 3BB
These movies would be unlikely to be hits in ANY era.
Basically, we're living in a world where there are...
-big giant IP blockbusters which are succeeding
-directors being given blank checks for personal, esoteric, off-putting movies that are not connecting with audiences
-Middle of the road movies like Where the Crawdads Sing and Bullet Train that no one writes about.
Why is no one focusing on point 3? Crawdads made 80m on 24m. Black Phone and Violent Night did fine. But oh no, the 60-on-RT, punishingly long, divisive, nonsensical-trailer Babylon failed!! Well yeah, so did Heavens Gate.
We don't need more Tars to save theaters (and Tar will be in my Top 5). We need some Beverly Hills Cops
Beverly Hills Cop was the biggest movie of the year at the domestic box office and marked the moment when a generational talent became the most famous person in the world. Hollywood would make nothing but Beverly Hills Cops headlined by nothing but Eddie Murphys and spend all year crashing them into one another like Matchbox cars if there were any way to plan for something like that.
Things like Where the Crawdads Sing and Bullet Train got on base by the skin of their teeth but neither seems like a promising path forward to me. Crawdads drafted behind its source material’s former popularity and prestige so people showed up despite the lousy reviews--it was not supposed to be a Nicholas Sparks movie, but that’s what we got. The 90 million dollar Bullet Train really should have made a bit more money, but more distressingly it’s built out of deadstock parts like Brad Pitt and a hard R rating that seem to be permanently out of manufacture. It’s a whole cast of great actors who will never be Brad Pitt famous--and consequently won’t headline any 90 million dollar non-IP R-rated action movies--because they didn’t have the chance to make movies in the 90s when there was still an incentive to foster a movie star’s career.
I’d bet that Black Phone wound up being way more profitable than Bullet Train, but nobody is worried about Blumhouse or the nifty and modest genre movies they make drying up and blowing away. They aren’t resource-intensive and one hit pays for 20 misses. If you want to make money, you make those. If you want to make Big Tech money, you make some IP pabulum. You only make Bullet Train if you want to be in business with Brad Pitt for the sake of Pitt, and they just don’t make them like him anymore.
Beverly Hills Cop was a 13m movie (38m in today's money) that used the third or fourth star who showed up for the role. You would indeed think that Hollywood would make nothing but such movies but they demonstrably don't. How many mid-budget movies aimed at being entertaining to wide swathes of America do you see right now?
And if Bullet Train was just !!BRAD PITT!! than Babylon would have done 100m, right? The difference is that Bullet Train is a movie that looked entertaining. Virtually nothing from the last few months LOOKS entertaining. Even The Fabelmans' trailer is all about magic of cinema rather than this is an enjoyable, bittersweet coming of age movie. Make movies people want to see. Crawdads is up to 124m worldwide on a 24m budget with no stars whatsoever. Because people wanted to see it.
All interesting thoughts from both y'all. We should definitely write off CRAWDADS as a source-fueled phenomenon. That book was a huge deal, and the pre-release buzz about the author wanted for questioning in Africa probably helped rather than hindered its box office. (I saw the film in a mixed public/press screening and the public folks were absolutely thrilled with it.)
I think James is right here about some of these big movies not seeming very entertaining to audiences. BABYLON and FABELMANS would be tough sells under any circumstances, but I do think the latter would have hooked audiences had they walked through the doors. They just didn't. The HEAVEN'S GATE comparison fascinates me, too. It almost feels like name directors are gobbling up budgets from whatever streaming service is desperate enough to bid for them and then burning them on uncommercial work (e.g. WHITE NOISE, BARDO, BABYLON). Noble but not sustainable.
is Fabelmans a tough sell? I can think of many successful films in it's category. or are you making a comparison to Major Studio Productions?
It's a 2.5 hour film about a Jewish family. I mean, Avalon didn't clean up at the box office either. Brighton Beach Memoirs is more of a comedy than Avalon or Fabelmans but it was not a hit either.
And I say this as someone who has The Fabelmans as my #1 film in 2022 and have urged friends to see it.
Agreed. Of all the prestige-y Hollywood films this season, The Fabelmans was the one I felt most comfortable recommending to regular folks like my family members. But then... how do you sell them on it? I struggled to get them excited. Neither the Spielberg filmmaking origin story nor the drama about a rocky marriage are all that hooky, much as those elements play out together so beautifully in the film. I guess we can just be glad it was made and move on!
aside from the Hanukkah scenes at the beginning and the anti-semitic bullying at the high school, and Judd Hirsch's entire scene.... ok, it's pretty jewish, I guess. but doesn't every movie about a quirky family have some details that people will find foreign? it's not something I thought about at all while watching it.
I'd honestly compare it to something like The Ice Storm, which was pretty highly acclaimed and popular in an art-house sense, and (according to wikipedia) only grossed $8m?? in '97! so is it really doing so bad?
When I was reading James’s Heaven’s Gate comparison it struck me as unexpected, inevitable, and spot-on. I don’t think people expected a straight-A student like Chazelle to turn in such an assaultive piece of work, and consequently he seems to have burned a lot of goodwill in addition to a mountain of cash. I’m a pretty big fan, but his next movie will probably be somewhat deformed by the reception this one got.
It’s really too bad that Fabelmans was hard to market. The trailer made it look like a crass parade of Spielbergian tics rather than the mature apotheosis of them. People will see it eventually, and they’ll love it, and this Spielberg kid is gonna be just fine, but I’m nervous that there are now several generations of directors underneath him who aren’t going to get the opportunities to make movies like that anymore because audiences just don’t show up for them. Hollywood used to be a place for transforming money into prestige which you could then use to get more money. Now the money is the prestige and the cohort of executives running the place don’t seem to enjoy movies at all.
Right, but the thing to worry about is that Crawdads scored big at the box office and STILL doesn’t have any movie stars in it. Did it really generate any momentum outside of itself? Is it Daisy Edgar-Jones’s A River Runs Through It moment, or is it a financially successful one-off that mined some coin out of some popular source material before evaporating from the popular consciousness?
I’m not saying Bullet Train’s receipts are attributable solely to Pitt--he’s surprisingly inconsistent as a pure box office draw, all-told--but rather that Bullet Train (or Babylon, or Ad Astra) exists in the first place because of his well-earned cachet, which is an increasingly rare commodity in film.
You’re 100% right that people saw it because it looked fun, but it troubles me that despite best practices being followed by all involved and a killer trailer it only managed 100 million domestic. It’s a break-even proposition that will be marginally profitable after the last bean is counted, which is not really what Hollywood does anymore.
I think the prevailing theme here is the collapse of the star system. A movie like Ticket To Paradise certainly benefited from old stars likes Clooney/Roberts-- god knows, it had nothing much to offer besides that-- but Daisy Edgar-Jones isn't a bankable star (or even known by many people who saw Crawdads, I bet) and even Pitt's success is movie-dependent. Few are going to see a film like Babylon on faith, but they'll turn out for Bullet Train because it looks like a bunch of badasses fighting on a fast-moving train.
Clooney is also the most obvious analogue to Pitt as someone who can get a movie with a decent budget made (or at least up until recently could) based far more on Clout than on consistent box office.
I do think that we're not in some sort of 'never again' movie star scenario though - it'll work differently than it has in the past but fully believe there is a generational switchover which will eventually lead us to a whole lot of new gen. top draws.
Side thought - do we consider Daniel Craig to be a Pitt-level star at this point? With all that Bond boost, he certainly helped make the first Knives Out a big success.
Re: stars, I would be interested to see one of the Stranger Things kids headline a major studio release to see if their Netflix popularity carries over. David Harbour did all right with the admittedly high concept Violent Night.
Harbour in Violent Night is an interesting case. He clearly has the attention and loyalty of his audience and he was able to leverage it to bring extra eyes to a Blumhouse-style potboiler. I bet Jon Hamm
This is from an indiewire story:
"Steven Spielberg’s 2021 “West Side Story” remake was a box-office disappointment with $76 million worldwide, a rare miss for the all-time box office king. After “The Fabelmans,” it’s less rare: After four weeks in theaters, Spielberg’s film grossed $6 million domestic."
No doubt that Spielberg did make a personal film, but damn, that is a cliff-worthy drop. Has to be his worst performing movie, ever, no?
I don't know about you guys, but I would not go see You Can Count on Me in the theater if it came out this year. I love that film to death, but it is a movie that was on the big screen because there was no streaming/cheap HD back in 2000.
It is interesting to see the domestic box office numbers of small Oscar movies. Like In the Bedroom cleared about $36mil back in 2001; Brooklyn in 2015 cleared around $38mil. Counting for inflation, that's a sizable fall. Licorice Pizza only cleared $17mil last year.
I would absolutely see You Can Count On me in the theater. I love seeing a movie in a theater, and it doesn't have to be spectacle to me (and yeah, I saw Tar, Banshees, Armageddon Time, White Noise, and much more in theaters the past few months).
You're keeping the spirit alive! This year I saw Top Gun, Avatar, and Tar in the theater, so I'm doing the barest of minimums...
My running joke is Tar would've done better if they'd named her Ava Tar and made that the title and siphoned some box office away from confused Avatar fans (awaits ban from future comments for pun crimes).
I'll allow it.
I think 2022 offered more reasons for optimism about the future of theaters than you're giving it credit for. Sure, Avatar 2, Top Gun 2, and Black Panther 2 all cleaned up, but lots of other kinds of movies found varying levels of unexpected and encouraging success in theaters as well: Barbarian, Smile, Where the Crawdads Sing, Elvis, Nope, The Woman King, Don't Worry Darling, Bullet Train, Pearl, Terrifier 2, and (of course) Everything Everywhere All At Once. I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting as well. None of those movies were sure things and none of them cost more than $90 million dollars (most cost much less), but people still came out to see them. Hell, at least two of those (Smile and Barbarian) were made for streaming and got theatrical releases after testing well. To me, that demonstrates that studios still at least have some investment in theaters.
I love it! Optimism! I guess my big caveat should have been horror. Original horror does seem to have an audience if the hook is big enough.
The other reason for optimism is Black Phone, Crawdads, Bullet Train, Ticket, Everywhere all slowly kept padding their box office totals. I never thought Bullet would clear $100M or Crawdads or Phone would clear $90M based on their opening weekends, but they kept going, I think in large part b/c studios were releasing so little in theaters. I think that means people WANT to go to the theaters, you have just have to give them a reason to and actually put movies in theaters they think might entertain them.
2019 saw a lot of original films clearing $100M (Knives Out, Ford v. Ferrari, Hustlers, Us, 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). I'm aware of the pandemic, but i don't think people just suddenly lost all appetite for original fare. I think we just saw a year where filmmakers released a 2 hr 40 minute movie with a title like Tar that features long discussions of classical music, a movie about a guy so depressed he starts chopping off his fingers, a film with an asshole child lead set in maybe the dreariest ever depiction of the early 1980s, a movie about sexual assaults in an isolated religious community, a 3 hour plus film about old Hollywood history that aggressively tries to alienate its audience in the first 10 minutes....And the trailers don't do the movies any favors, the worst being the only trailer of Till I saw in a theater featuring a lot of interviews with director and cast telling me how important the movie was.
And FWIW, I liked Tar a lot, thought Babylon was flawed but fascinating (sadly it's at its weakest when it tries to shock) would classify Banshees and Armageddon good, and have not seen Till (Women Talking hasn't opened in my city yet).
One of the only things I miss about being on Twitter is missing little bits of news like DISAPPOINTMENT BLVD. being renamed BEAU IS AFRAID, and spending a couple days wondering if the former had been shelved before I get around to Googling it. (DB was always hyped as a comedy instead of a horror, so the rebranding and re-genreing is perplexing - desperate marketing, or accurate description of the final product?)
I mean, it kinda sounds like Aster in MIDSOMMAR mode, right? Surreal horror-comedy. I choose to be optimistic, though I've heard it's going to be on the long-ish side?
do I just not connect with McDonagh? I enjoyed BoI quite a bit: it's very funny, very bleak, there's some great acting and there's beautiful scenery.... but it didn't move me. We got to the climax and it felt extremely similar to the ending to Three Billboards. Like, it felt copied. Again, really good film, but I don't get the love it has seen.
But then again (and I know I've already disagreed about this with you previously, Scott) I don't get the love for Kimi this year. Is it because Soderbergh doesn't speak to me? I feel the constant comparisons to 70's paranoia classics like The Conversation did it a disservice, because it's only superficially like those movies: we know very very quickly that our protagonist isn't imagining anything. It was very enjoyable and spry, but nothing more than that to me. (and having watched Run, Lola, Run for the podcast, it pales in comparison. Kimi's script needed some polishing, but that's something I not infrequently think of Soderbergh's work)
I'm with you generally in thinking Soderbergh's films tend to be a tad underbaked-- if consistently compelling-- but KIMI had so much dexterity. Heavy themes but all done with a lightness of touch.
I’m hopelessly in the bag for Mcdonagh but I can see finding him a bit remote. The emotional responses he pulls out of me are usually related more to his formal approach--the symmetries, the sharp left turns, the compositional rigor of the dialogue, basically the virtuosity on display--than any kind of human exchange with what the characters are feeling. Three Billboards would be the exception, but that is a complicated movie to defend and potentially a dangerous one to connect to. Do any of his movies work better for you than others?
Great list from the big dog. I give you full marks on all your picks.
I’d have to disagree on Mark Rylance in BONES AND ALL, I’d have his Old Gregg impression on my “worst performances of 2022” list.
Rylance seems to be a love-it/hate-it proposition these days, but I really found his effective inn this.
ok, let's talk theaters! I, too, saw Glass Onion in it's theatrical release and can't understand how Netflix didn't have a plan in place to extend it's run if it was successful
But how are we judging theatrical success in a world in which movies are release streaming same day or within a month? in which studios don't seem to know how to market to people who don't head to the theater every week? in which we have no idea how much revenue these movies are driving for their streaming-service owners?
Avatar has, despite all expectations, gotten decent critical attention. It did not flop. but is it a wild success? (maybe you know the money it's pulling down and know it is) I will say that I do not know a single person who is not a film critic that has seen it. I'm glad people think it's impressive, but it doesn't seem to be drawing people in my circles.
Is Fabelmans a failure? It's not performing up to "spielbergian" standards, but what *should* a period coming of age film with no supernatural features be expected to do? It's still playing in my area and there was a decent crowd over the holidays? maybe it's still performing? (thought I do think they botched the advertising and rollout for that one)
we know blockbusters will continue to bring people to the theater. but unfortunately I think we still don't know what else might draw them. (myself, a theater enthusiast, included. when viewing windows are short and you know something will immediately be on streaming, it can be hard to prioritize going out exactly when the film is available. we've been spoiled)
Netflix really blew it with Glass Onion. I think I understand their business model, it makes sense in a McKinsey management consulting sort of way, but here on the ground it seems to me like people who saw it in theaters loved it and the Netflix release met with a far more tepid response. It’s not just selection bias that the big fans ran out to see it asap, it’s that it very purposefully frustrates and manipulates you. Seeing it with an audience whose lightbulbs are turning on at different intervals really helps you dismiss that discomfort and get swept away. Twitter says “the smashing went on too long” but the audience I was with knew a good rake joke when they saw one and were howling the entire time.
Anecdotally I’ve been hearing a lot of “the first half was too slow so I watched it in two parts” from my movie friends, which is certainly their prerogative but also wow, way to deflate the souffle.
I mean, you can assume that folks who did whatever they could to see Glass Onion in its very short release window were the folks most likely to really, really love it. You can also assume that NF makes more money having it in their system with some 'was briefly in theaters' buzz rather than a longer theatrical release which eats heavily into their huge investment.
Yeah, I don't think they're getting $100M in new subscribers by putting it on Netflix, but I think it would've made $100M if it had a real theatrical release (nor do I think they lose $100M in subscribers if they left it in theaters for a month or two).
Because I'm an idiot, I saw every wide release in 2022 and the real problem I see is the studios taking whole months off from releasing any major titles. Between Bullet Train and Black Adam, there were no studio movies aimed at a wide audience. A couple horror titles like Barbarian and Smile and arthouse movies that should have platformed like 3,000 Years of Longing. When commercial movies like Glass Onion, Prey, and Turning Red are dumped on a streaming service during otherwise barren times like those at the box office, you're training general audiences to not even check their local listings.
This is a great point. It feels like part of the theatrical ecosystem is missing, and a lot of features that should've been mid-budget success stories are still being shunted to streaming. There's just not enough variety to get people back into the groove of going to the theater. Confess Fletch should be up on that list -- with decent marketing and wide release, that should've done well.
I'll be curious to see if the drying up of streaming $ in 2023 causes any shift back. At the very least situations like Glass Onion and Prey where a streamer is obviously leaving money on the table seem less likely.
The Confess, Fletch release strategy was truly a worst of both worlds scenario. I saw it in a totally empty theater on a Sunday afternoon. A limited release for that movie makes absolutely no sense. And when it comes to streaming, it's a Showtime exclusive? Baffling.
What bothers me about Confess, Fletch is that no major studio will make another movie like it ever again even though it’s a good and sturdy piece of work that pleased whatever audience found it. It’s a clever and charismatic and seductively sleepy piece of work that makes you feel like life is fine while you’re watching it, so it’s exactly the naptime-adjacent cable TV classic its makers were aiming for. It lives and breathes the scruffy, amiable, and smart unambitiousness of its hero.
There’s no way to make that kind of movie anymore unless some benevolent dads like Mottola and Hamm cough up a bunch of cash and give us another one for free. I really hope they get to do it again, but I already appreciate their largesse in paying for this one. It’s a remarkably uncynical movie, and their lowkey and well-earned pride shines off the screen.
Here, here.
Yeah, I think Netflix and Hulu both could've had $100M domestic grossers if they had given them real theatrical releases. And while streamers are very guarded about their numbers, I'm skeptical if they made that much in new subscribers from having it on their service.
What were you thoughts on BONES AND ALL? (I’m sure you reviewed it but it’s so hard af to find a search feature in this mobile app)
Keith reviewed it for us (https://thereveal.substack.com/p/in-review-bones-and-all-the-menu), and I think we're more or less in lock step in liking the film.
"Is there a place for simply liking Everything Everywhere All at Once with mild reservations?" Scott, if you ever find this place, please post directions, because I want to go to there.
I'm not sure if you'll see this, Scott, but I would love an article that untangles Steven Soderbergh's prolific output. I haven't seen several of his films of the last decade, and wonder which are worth watching.
That's a whole lot of untangling! But I'll keep it in mind.
Thanks for the reply! Maybe if you ever start a feature here in the vein of Career View from The Dissolve. Otherwise, perhaps keeping it limited to his works under a specific budget limit would help. I mean, people are already pretty well informed about Erin Brockovich, Traffic, or the Ocean's and Magic Mike movies.