Michael and Mickey Move, Rodrigo Bombs on Netflix and Neeson Bombs in Theaters

And how Hollywood's reactions to alleged controversies over 'The Interview' in 2014 and 'The Hunt' in 2019 may soon become par for the course in a second Trump term.

In tonight’s “distraction from doomscrolling” newsletter... 

• About last night... (free… or free to skip if that’s not why you’re here)

• Lionsgate’s Michael is now set to be the biggest movie of October instead of April. 

• WBD’s Mickey 17 just moved into Michael’s now-vacated Easter slot. 

• Judging by viewership, Olivia Rodrigo going with Netflix was a... bad idea, right? 

• A slew of early 2020s Liam Neeson thrillers from smaller distributors helped keep theaters alive but cost the veteran actor his action-hero box office bankability.

“Well, that just happened...!” 

No, this won’t be a passionate monologue railing against last night’s electoral defeat or a reassurance that everything will be okay. First, I have no idea to what extent everything will be okay. Second, some people will emerge over the next however many years less okay than others. Third, this is a site that deals with the entertainment industry, and while I might occasionally feel like a collaborator for discussing the bread and circuses of the moment, at the end of the day, entertainment is supposed to be a distraction, a form of escapism to put the day’s worries and tragedies on hold temporarily. So, while I’m not going to never, ever talk about social issues or politics because it all often meshes as a giant pop culture sandbox, I will remember that at least some of you might be seeking a momentary distraction from the horrors at hand. 

Beyond tangible concern for life and liberty and a mostly unbroken streak of anger at many of those most likely to be set aflame consistently voting for the arsonists while punishing the firefighters, this does relitigate an ever-present pop culture conundrum when discussing what films get made, what those films might be about and how they play critically and commercially. The result in 2016 was shocking for any number of reasons. Still, it also offered a skewed notion that gazillions of consumers had (to use two ham-fisted examples) previously cheered on The Avengers and Katniss Everdeen only to willingly handed executive power to a less charismatic variation of Loki and General Snow. Now that it’s essentially happened again, with the benefit of prior knowledge no less, what are we to make of mainstream art that bothers to espouse positive morality, progressive messaging, or even preschool-level action → consequence narratives? 

Maybe that merely plays into a “was never all-that true” narrative that mainstream pop culture can have a direct cause-and-effect relationship to its viewership. Watching horror movies doesn’t make you a violent person. Free Willy didn’t result in folks racing to SeaWorld and helping the Orcas escape into the ocean. Whether indifference, obliviousness or a stubborn ability to see ourselves as the good guys no matter the narrative, folks who love Beauty and the Beast still champion a proverbial Gaston becoming president *twice.* It’s not a terribly good movie, but even next week’s Red One hits a minor topical chord via Dwayne Johnson’s disenchantment over there being more folks on the naughty list than on the nice list. We have an entire political party filled with folks who would be too comically evil for a Saturday morning cartoon, and a majority of voters didn’t mind or proactively picked them.  

Even the mere clinical calling of balls and strikes may be compromised. After all, as someone who fancies himself one who is skilled and experienced at explaining “why” a film got made, made a given artistic decision and then was or was not commercially successful, what if the answer is now doomed to consistently be “The publicly traded corporation didn’t want to piss off the performatively vindictive and petty head of the executive branch of the federal government”? We’re approaching the tenth anniversary of Sony’s The Interview, which (may have) caused Sony to have its emails hacked and leaked, followed by terroristic threats allegedly from the North Korean government. Sony capitulated (after theaters caved first), and the film debuted mainly on VOD. Five years later, Universal and Blumhouse’s The Hunt got delayed primarily due to fear of political backlash over its satirical “rich liberals hunting poor conservatives for sport” narrative.  

Neither were big-budget tentpoles, and the skittishness was less about those individual films and more about the potential macro-sized blowback. The Hunt (a $7 million programmer eventually released right as the world was shutting down amid COVID) and The Interview were not worth the potential harm to theaters or studios regarding potential tickets sold or money made from much larger films. Suppose the Trump administration does show its teeth in terms of aggressively petty tit-for-tat cause and effect. Will the general output from major studios, even streamers that allegedly want “something for everyone,” eventually align with “red state” values or be so vanilla and bland so as not to offend any specific sensibility? Sure, an A24 might still try to release an I Saw the TV Glow, but will large(r) theater chains with shareholders fearing an angry “Truth” be willing to play it? 

This is all highly speculative. However, as much as studios will want to make the “content” that makes them money, a stock price that can be based as much on outside events or narratives as on tangible revenue or presumed future income may well forsake even likely moneymakers that might risk the ire of the current political ruling class. Or maybe not, since it’s not like Disney or Universal can plan on Lightyear or First Man spending years in production only to get libeled at the last second by Patricia Heaton accusing Disney of castrating the title character or the likes of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz spreading literal false flag narratives. Neither of those films failed at the box office *because* of those “controversies,” but the overriding potential for tangible punitive action may change the variables. The (relative) doomsday scenario is that one of Disney’s “exclusively gay moments” becomes an actual act of courage. 

And now, back to our regularly scheduled nonsense...