BoxOfficeFangrl

I never used to feel this way but the NBA playoffs are so long! So for now I just see the results on social media. Also Jokic's pregame movie promo:

I can't say I'm that surprised there's a potential movie purporting to exonerate OJ and somebody Black Famous agreed to star in it. When the trial was happening the surveys showed a huge racial divide in beliefs about his innocence and in my experience, that feeling hasn't entirely gone away. Add in how conspiracy theories and the manosphere have flourished in recent years, and a movie sympathetic to OJ will have its defenders online. Will they actually watch? That's another story. The Juice was famous for decades and had a bunch of celebrity/insider friends before the murders and for some, the fandom never stops no matter what. So they look for "the real killers", harder than OJ ever did... No, what surprises me in all this is how much money was allegedly offered to land Owen Wilson in a leading role. What did they think he was going to offer to this cinematic masterpiece, and why did they think he'd ever agree to it? Honestly, the best a production of this caliber (with Charlotte Kirk! as Nicole Brown) could have hoped for is Johnny Depp, but even he might have turned this down, so they'd have to settle for someone on the geezer teaser circuit.

I don't primarily think of Match Point that way either, but the sources that do include: Rotten Tomatoes Wikipedia The Hollywood Reporter (the photo for Match Point is Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing tennis, lol) Esquire Town & Country (not a movie mag but pretty plugged into the country club set) Hey, I don't make the rules... Maybe they're stretching the definition because it's not an extensive list. I think Challengers was wise to lead the advertising with the sexiness, because people going into it expecting the typical American "sports movie" wouldn't be able to handle this.

I watched it last night and it's going to inspire so much fanfic. Who knows how Film TikTok will handle the sensuality... Match Point (2005) has a worldwide gross of $85.6 million. That looks to be the one to beat, unless there's some big IP thing with tennis scenes that technically lets it count as a "tennis movie" (the way Wonder Woman makes the lists of World War 1 films).

Oh wow, but they looked sweet together at the Golden Globes. Social media will be absolutely chaotic if this news proves true (though such rumors were denied by Kris Jenner TMZ earlier this month). As it is...

Bob Marley: One Love is on Paramount+ already. My local AMC only had one showing for it yesterday (at 4:20 pm) and tickets were priced at $4.20. Expecting National Theater Day levels of attendance here would have been pretty foolish. I'm not sure hitting $100m, $200m, etc milestones matters for studios like it used to. Cable TV rights can't be worth much these days and streaming rights seem to be sold before the movie's even out. Maybe they are still trying to push things over the line but the efforts just don't work in this era? They seen to come too late in the game to make a difference.

I wonder if Paramount will report the numbers... One of the local AMCs is playing it all day today, but the other only has one showtime starting at 4:20 (of course). It's already on Paramount+ so I doubt it will do much.

In 2019 it was revealed WB made a lowball offer to AdeIe Lim for writing the sequel's screenplay, so she walked. You wonder if all the other Asian women screenwriters refused to work on it in solidarity (or an implicit threat of blacklisting). Also, Gemma Chan got caught accidentally liking an extremely negative tweet about Constance Wu. The biggest factor was probably the pandemic changing WB priorities.

Previews get separate CinemaScores now? Okay...

Paramount+ has it already, I don't know how much it'll do. It would have been really funny if they'd debuted it theaters on 4/20. It's a Saturday so I know that's not how the release schedule works, but it would have gotten great publicity.

It's going to be this year's, "Wait, Dear Evan Hansen isn't about a gay kid who breaks his arm?" when the trailer gets released. So many ardent stans of the original, but if the trailers hint at the book's story at all, the broader public is going to have some serious questions...

IDK sometimes it takes a few attempts before a nugget of information truly sticks with people and makes them want to "do something". Sometimes the audience isn't receptive at first because the new info goes too far against what they believe about the entity being criticized, or story goes underreported, so it's like yelling into the wind. But a few months or years pass, there's a shift, and suddenly people are willing to listen. In this case I wouldn't be totally stunned if the Very Online critics of Civil War's politics and Garland by extension, catch wind of A24 doing fresh business in Russia and raise a new fuss. And maybe it catches wind now because the crowd that's angry about this movie might be in a "takedown" sort of mood. Not that it'll sink the movie, but the Civil War dissenters have already tried pushing negative stories about it with far less juice than A24 possibly circumventing an economic boycott with geopolitical implications.

Ukrainian Cinema Union Calls Out Lionsgate, A24 and More for Releasing Films in Russia, Claims It Supports ‘Terrorism’ (Variety, May 18 2023): Lionsgate did say they wouldn't do further business in Russia. Third party arrangements are still legal, however... I don't think typical A24 fan would like it at all if they're doing new business in Russia right now...

In awards spaces, people have been saying she's "Blue MAGA" for years. I became disenchanted over a decade ago but recall her misogyny towards younger women in the industry and repeated meltdowns about awards results. Many awards stans display a total inability to understand that tastes differ, so voters liking The King's Speech or Lady Bird or whatever is not part of some nefarious plot—but when being a Oscar pundit is your career, you should really try to keep things professional. Supposedly, the 2016 election outcome was the real breaking point. Some cynics wonder how much of the displayed beliefs are real, versus positioning oneself as an anti-woke "beacon" in a glut of liberal/progressive awards pundits. Blogging doesn't pay like it did in the aughts, but there's a lucrative audience in appealing to right wingers in the culture wars. OTOH, Sasha and Jeff Wells were friendly once and he's been widely loathed for his racial and gender politics even before #MeToo, so maybe she was never as enlightened as her (old) image.

It was the AMC Screen Unseen movie on Monday and it is pretty much Guy Ritchie's Inglourious Basterds. For $5 it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen, but don't expect anything too deep or rigorous about historical accuracy.