BoxOfficeFangrl

Their canceled wedding was really lavish, they blamed that for calling it off (and not their obvious issues as a couple back then): https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/18/jennifer-lopez-and-ben-afflecks-canceled-2003-wedding-would-have-been-massive/ Someone took the "celebrity decoy bride" premise and made a romcom out of it!

I wonder if this is it or if they're going to have some big, splashy ceremony later on. They were going to have a huge wedding the first time around and canceled at the last minute, but JLo really seems into that sort of fanciness. OTOH, you know some family and friends are rolling their eyes at this whole relationship and Marriage #4 for her.

Marvel thought Jane's return was a big deal but I'm not sure how much the fans ever agreed. Ragnarok was a huge commercial/critical hit without her, after all. I just remember that I found Thor and Jane to be a perfectly nice couple in the first two and was surprised how much that did not seem to be a majority sentiment at the time: so many people just thought the character was annoying and useless. And the Portman fans more in the awards space weren't really into CBMs anyway and thought she was better off making other kinds of movies. So, getting Jane more involved in the action might have been a good idea on paper but wasn't necessarily going to move the needle in a big way.

Was Jane's return really a big draw? I remember MCU fans calling her a weak point of the first two movies and wanting Thor to get with Sif. Portman has a following but they're not necessarily comic book movie fans. I think there was the potential for Love & Thunder to do a bit better than it has based on quality, but they're also four movies in. People either like the character's solo movies or they don't and there's only so much room for growth. The Disney+ component also doesn't help, especially if the perception is of the movie being not that great. For a so-so movie, people can wait a month and a half.

There's nothing wrong with it having an original soundtrack song, the focus on it with Crawdads IMO seems a bit excessive for the kind of movie it is. The trailers were fine, but I feel like I saw a million "Here's Reese Witherspoon saying how much she likes the book! Taylor Swift!" ads. Just an odd way to promote a 1960s coming of age/romance/crime drama, like they felt the cast itself had no star power. When Fincher was announced as the director, IIRC some fans of his were surprised since Gone Girl was such a summer beach read sort of book. The subject matter was fairly cynical and the way he approached it got the critics on its side, though it did miss a lot of expected Oscar nominations for such an acclaimed hit.

Learning Gloria Allred and Lisa Bloom were related was simultaneously surprising, yet also made perfect sense. There are some parallels to how the Weinstein allegations exploded over the course of several weeks vs Tiger Woods, but also major differences, obviously.

Yeah, the poor Crawdads reviews aren't a big mystery: it's based on "chick lit" when most of the verified critics are men, and the book supposedly has "problematic" elements that critics (regardless of gender) would care about and downgrade their reviews as a result. The author being wanted for questioning in a murder and evading that since the 1990s, it's another thing some critics probably held against the movie. Meanwhile, the fanbase only cares if the movie is like the book, give them that with decent/good acting and they'll be happy. And people who haven't read the book might like the movie if they generally enjoy similar sorts of stories. I haven't read Crawdads, I've just found the advertising weird in the focus on the celebrity producer talking about the book, and a soundtrack song when it's not a music movie.

IMDb lists someone credited with a voice role for Rose McGowan, so maybe that's how they're going to deal with the celebrities who made accusations. And in general, focus more on the women who weren't as famous for onscreen time. Just looking through the cast list and saw Lisa Bloom as a character, I bet they just lifted her quotes from the news and stuck them right into the script, she'll seem like a cartoon villain.

I mean, Pitt is part of the story, as Weinstein tried it with Gwyneth, she told then-boyfriend Brad and he threatened Harvey in response. Gwyneth was one of the first big names to go on the record against Weinstein in the NY Times and probably should be a character in this movie. The Times got Brad to corroborate Gwyneth's story, so in theory, there could even be a Pitt cameo. Wasn't Angelina Jolie part of that same article with Gwyneth? I don't know if any version of this movie was ever interested in onscreen depictions of Goop and Brangelina per se, but Pitt's involvement in the production made the odds even lower, I bet.

Fair points, it might get meh reviews and not be enough of a target. And how could I forget how much Film Twitter likes Carey, remember all the, " Here's how Mulligan can still win!" comments when she was in the race for Promising Young Woman, good times...

This is totally going to be Film Twitter villain of awards season (Brad Pitt is producing and He Knew! Annapurna collaborated with The Weinstein Company before! Are the only victims really white women?), but that hasn't stopped movies from winning, even.

Whoa, this sounds like it was unexpected: I remember all the entertainment news shows my mom watched when I was a kid, the Trumps were huge pop culture figures and had an extremely messy, public divorce. She was sort of a famous socialite type for years after...

I saw some posters on social media (Twitter, Reddit) insisting that Lea and Beanie were equally famous/popular, so they didn't understand how the show would risk casting someone known for being problematic. Well, here you go, Twitter is not real life and Glee at its height was far more seen than anything Beanie Feldstein has ever done.

LOL, and the other half was Reese saying how much she liked the book... Crawdads certainly isn't being advertised like a product the studio is confident in on its own merits.

In 2024, Bradley's gonna be flying back and forth between Iowa and the Critics Choice Awards, loool... Yeah, that's her ex. Any guy following him doesn't exactly have to clear a high bar to seem amazing in comparison.

Interesting, the recent political comments make sense now... Apparently he was linked to Dianna Agron all the way back in May? Hopefully, it lasts longer than Irina and Kanye...

A relative unknown seems the smart way to go, but Hollywood likes a "sure thing". If they are using Amy's recordings (with a soundalike for random moments of singing here and there), then it wouldn't matter if the actress has much of a voice in real life. Someone plucked from total obscurity would be great, but a big name means a bigger budget in showbiz.

OMG, of course ATJ is going to play My Blake Incarcerated (Amy referred to him like that in an acceptance speech once, that's been his name to me ever since). If this has Mitch Winehouse's backing, then Blake is bound to be the ultimate villain here, as her dad will want to redeem his image after coming off so poorly in the Amy documentary. I wonder how much of the Frank era will be shown, I like the vibe, but it'd also show just how drastically things changed with her over time.

Kevin Smith wasn't even mad at Scorsese, he was just saying it wasn't a surprise that someone of Marty's caliber wouldn't be into stuff like the MCU (the "out of touch" part was unfortunate, I personally don't agree). In the same interview, Smith even commented on how the media is just asking directors about comic book movies so they can generate clickbait, and the smart thing is just to avoid answering. Didn't take his own advice, heh. It's really not hard, focus on the positive aspects of your movie, especially when it's just opening.

I used to read the Deuxmoi subreddit, someone was always ranting about Taika abandoning his New Zealander wife and kids to go party it up with starlets. Whatever, internet randoms don't know what happened in someone else's marriage and they split years ago, but that was part of the backlash. I do think it's a bit...interesting that we live a time where people on Twitter constantly question age gaps of any sort, if movies should even have love scenes and overall "power dynamics", but attractive actor/directors making out with their cast members (on or offscreen) is totally fine, apparently. Would everyone who was all, "Chill out, they're adults!" about the Taika/Rita/Tessa pics have been as blasé about photos of James Gunn/Karen Gillan or Zendaya and Jon Watts getting similarly cosy? I'm going to say no. The movie didn't turn out amazingly but at least they seem to have had a good time making it? Oh well... The World Cup is in November - December this year because it's in Qatar. If Next Goal Wins was being released around Christmas, you could advertise it during the tournament. But that's not happening, it's pushed to 2023.

I think a Vocal/Motion Capture Performance category would be a good addition to the Oscars. In some ways those roles can be more challenging, because they often have to pull off those emotional scenes alone in a recording booth or in a mocap suit vs acting across from other actors on a set. Also, some of the most memorable voice/mocap roles are from fantasy/sci-fi movies or comedic in nature, another disadvantage in an Oscar race, as wearing prosthetics and disappearing into a biopic role tends to be viewed as the height of acting. Is live-action acting (for lack of a better phrase) better than voice acting, or just different? There are different Oscars for Original vs Adapted Screenplay and the concept isn't remotely controversial. If there'd been a separate Academy Award for voice/mocap acting years ago, then Gollum, Genie from Aladdin and Rocket Raccoon would likely be Oscar winning roles and that would be kind of cool. OTOH any Oscar category added now would be viewed as lesser, fairly or not.

I understand why certain actors could get $7.5 million upfront for a part in an MCU sequel, or Lena Headey getting that much for a Game of Thrones movie. It just seems odd she could command that much for a Thor movie where the role was ultimately insignificant enough to cut (if the reports are accurate).

But people could just end up feeling like it's a retread... I do agree that the lack of broader purpose (or the perception of it) with Phase 4 probably isn't helping with general audiences. Without the sense the story is leading somewhere, there's less forgiveness of weaker quality entries and each movie relies on the popularity of the lead characters to compel audiences to care. And being on Disney+ in 45ish days doesn't help the box office.

Will never forget the Eternals opening weekend... There was lots of insistence that only extremely online people paid attention to Rotten Tomatoes, then Saturday Night Live aired and during the cold open, the Trump impersonator riffed on Eternals' bad RT score. Even if critics turned on the MCU, if audiences were still into the new movies, they'd all still be getting the A, A- Cinemascores like before. Critics always hated Transformers but fans were here for it...until they weren't. Nothing is too big to fail. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but anything can fall off due to failure to adapt. The VFX people are just overworked, even before Covid it was a problem with the MCU and now there's way more content.