BoxOfficeFangrl

This is why James Gunn was trending? Anyway, I agree Hollywood should not be averse to casting taller women with shorter men and actually portraying that, instead of relying on camera trickery and lifts to pretend he's not way shorter. Until that happens, actors will keep lying about their heights.

Fans of the show say the movie cut out a lot (apparently 8 songs), while I'm watching and thinking it's a bit too much of an ensemble piece and there's not enough focus on Usnavi if he's supposed to be the main character.

With any simultaneous release, some of the people who watch at home would have gone to see it at the movies instead, if that had been the only option. Not all, but maybe half or a third. That's money that would have gone to the box office but didn't. So how can you say that streaming makes no difference to the box office? Obviously, with In the Heights, it wouldn't have had some $30 million opening but for HBO Max, but how much did it siphon off? Look at the latest Conjuring movie compared to A Quiet Place 2, their 3-day opening weekends are $23m apart. Does anyone think that would be the case if Conjuring 3 had had the exclusive theatrical window? It shaved off $10m at least, probably more, as the other two movies had $40m OWs and The Nun did $53m (although franchises fall off, the box office isn't totally back, etc). Anyway, that's all to say I think a simultaneous release was bad for In the Heights: musicals are a tricky genre that rely heavily on word of mouth, repeat viewers and older audiences to be leggy box office hits. All of that's gone when it's already on streaming from day one. Also, it seems like the coastal- heavy nature of ITH should have been something WB picked up on in whatever internal research a studio does before releasing a movie. Maybe put it in 1800 - 2000 theaters instead of 3400? It probably makes the same money more or less.

IDK, but Green Book was surprisingly big in China - it's the bargaining stage for this stan, hoping there’s a miracle for ITH.

If you watch ITH, you can see the similarities to Hamilton in terms of music and that it's very song-heavy (compared to a La La Land), and Anthony Ramos sounds a lot like Lin-Manuel with the rap-singing. I guess you can say the leads are both striving for a better future, but "Racebent Founding Fathers Hip-Hop Musical" is very different than "struggles of a regular guy running a corner store". The trailers didn't lie: ITH really is about dreams and gentrification with some romance and Dreamer commentary thrown in. It's beautiful with a very familiar message in the end, but not the easiest sell compared to other musicals-turned-movies. I'm impressed it got the budget it did, though WB is probably regretting it now. I am not sure how the Twitter controversies about colorism or ITH not being true representation of Washington Heights really hurt the movies, there were similar online complaints about Crazy Rich Asians (the lead guy is mixed, it ignores lower class people in Singapore) but that was a big hit anyway.

DCOM - Disney Channel Original Movie, the bigger ones turn into franchises like High School Musical or The Descendants. Netflix is looking for sheer content to attract/retain eyeballs with their movies. It's all about getting those people who will watch whatever to have a new movie to watch every week so they'll keep subscribing, quality is an incidental bonus. If you look at Hollywood movie studios in the 1930s, many released tons of movies each year, the classics are remembered but a lot of their output was considered mediocre or worse, even at the time.

Hmmmm. After seeing this, I really understand the trailers, which really do capture the spirit/subject matter of overall movie. I loved it by the end, but can understand why there's a struggle in selling it to movie audiences. You can tell Lin-Manuel wrote the Usnavi songs for his own range, but I guess you can get away with that when you created the whole thing. When it's someone else, it's kind of glaring when the friend of the lead gets the real vocal showcases. Anthony Ramos has a better voice than Lin, and maybe they tweaked the Usnavi songs from the stage show, but they could have done more. It is a spectacle and I'd recommend the big screen if very sing-songy musicals are your thing.

Even before the pandemic the trend was going towards a shorter marketing window - the first trailer for Us dropped at Christmas for a March release, Hustlers had its first trailer in July and came out in September. The social media embargo for ITH lifted what feels like months ago, all the "Movie theaters are back!" reactions from critics seem to come from a time before big showy movies were getting released again. I think there was a feeling this would be a Crazy Rich Asians for Latinos, especially with the same director and all, but the storyline of CRA was pretty clear from the trailers. Asian-Americans aren't a monolith either but the storyline there spoke to a broader issue (East-West culture clash) relatable to people of different backgrounds. And the mother-in-law hating her son's girlfriend is a very common plot for rom-coms the world over. From the trailer a couple months ago, In the Heights is a musical about dreams and...gentrification? And some couples get together, maybe. Haha, we really should have seen an underperformance coming...

90 minutes long or blow it out to a limited series! /s This world is seriously damaging our attention spans. Not great for In the Heights, but the warning signs were there about it not breaking out. It feels like a bit of a critic/audience disconnect, or maybe a (lack) of name recognition thing? WB probably wishing they'd gotten Lin-Manuel to star with some MCU/Irishman de-aging technology, sorry Ally Maine's BFF... Musicals can really leg it out but that's where HBO Max might really hurt. They can have a lot of older viewers and/or repeat business, but those fans can just watch ITH again at home.

LOL, guess WB didn't like the Thursday numbers... It was a pretty last minute change and In the Heights is not a big enough property to withstand that easily.

LOL, they are downplaying Chastain's makeup, Tammy Faye was truly something. The movie seems to be painting Tammy Faye as largely an innocent in everything and I wonder if that's going to hold up to current day scrutiny. Looking at Twitter, there is anger that Hollywood is making a movie about the Bakkers at all, even if it ends up depicting them negatively. This one is going to have to deal with a lot of thinkpieces, I suspect...

I love how they use Wildest Dreams to sell Spirit Untamed, a kids' movie. The original song's all about Taylor knowing it was never going to work long-term with Harry Styles a guy, but the sex... Some very judicious edits going on compared to the original: A Quiet Place Part 2 was probably frontloaded and has to deal with virtually no Canadian box office, plus some percentage still leery about theaters.

True, they might have thought the show would play out in real time, more or less, so a growing kid wouldn't have been an issue. The show changed a lot in the early stages, at one point Jack was going to die in the pilot and be played by Michael Keaton. The fans were really raging when they got that or Nikki and Paulo, haha. I wonder how Lost would have played out in the streaming era, it would have like half as many episodes for starters.

It was only in the last season or two that ABC scheduled Lost to air uninterrupted from week to week, before then the schedule could be very stop and start. So islostarepest.com sprang up and just had "Yes" or "No" on the page when you visited it. And there was the site where audio of Michael saying "Waaaaaaalt" would play on a loop. I wonder if they thought about casting an actor with younger brothers to get around Walt obviously growing up faster than the show's timeline.

Not really surprised: I think a large segment of the Facebook mom fans couldn't have cared less about Chris Harrison's comments defending Antebellum balls... But a lot of the non-white contestants said they'd skip Bachelor In Paradise if he hosted it. Also, his salary has to be huge after nearly 20 years hosting, ABC is probably not averse to cutting him loose for economic reasons alone. Comedians, though...there's a small but loud contingent of the Bachelor fambase that is very SJW and always disappointed that dating show influencers aren't using their platforms to speak out on the political/social issues of the day, and instead just shill beauty products and post sponsored content. So, I wonder if there will be vetting of the guest hosts by the Bachelor fans who fancy themselves as activists, and unearthing of un-PC jokes in an attempt to hold these guest stars "accountable". Speaking of which, the Ellie Kemper thing...all these headlines about it being a Klan event, when the thing was integrated before she was born and decades before she attended it? Let's "cancel" everyone who ever went to church, universities that were segregated once (even if it ended a long time before they got there) or set foot inside a country club...

I saw so many people on Twitter who thought it was Margot in Ready or Not at first. Babylon should just go ahead and also cast Emma Mackey and Jaime Pressly, to really mess with everyone.

Cillian Murphy was a great addition, but why'd they have to do Djimon like that?

I doubt this will be that expensive and Cats was not just bad but very weird. And Taylor came off better than most from Cats. There's always failed Oscar bait every year, most of it is just "meh" vs. being truly laughable and the stars aren't hurt by it that much. I was looking at multiple subreddits yesterday where people were discovering the dirt on him for the first time. The talk will only get louder as the movie comes out, the stars will be left to promote this as the studio hides Russell as much as possible.

I'm just surprised Taylor would sign on to a David O. Russell movie, given her image. It's such an obvious #TimesUp situation waiting to happen, he hasn't promoted a movie since 2015 and the climate has changed a lot since then.

Interesting...

Screenwriters sharing their experiences of meeting with MGM... I get whatever reflexive response people might have to Amazon, but MGM has been struggling for a while... Do all the people complaining now think MGM was going to magically rise from the ashes and return to its Golden Age glory on its own? MGM was either going to get bought out or die out.

Apparently, there's been a whole Film Twitter "discourse" about Cruella today. Anyway, Emma Stone on who the movie is for:

This movie is still filming?

I guess someone sat Ben down and told him that clapping back at the haters for another four months is not the way to go...