New Netflix Film Chief Name in the Mix; Sweeney Mystery
Today's Thursday jamboree edition
Let the Sweeney out of the Bottle!
Why isn’t anyone, or everyone, jumping for joy about Anyone But You?
Five weeks into its release, the Sydney Sweeney/Glen Powell R-rated rom-com sits at #3 in the nation and is barely slowing down. Though it opened to a disastrous $6 million on 3000 screens, the movie just kept going. Having currently raked in $71 million it’s up to a 12 multiple, unthinkable for a comedy. An R-rated comedy. It is starring a pair who were not considered big movie stars a few weeks ago. That doesn’t even have the power of great critical buzz behind it (it got a decent for a rom-com 57 percent on Rotten Tomatoes).
It’s another step towards resuscitating the corpse of the theatrical rom-com, and the R-rated comedy. So why doesn’t Hollywood want to tell that story?
It could be that this was a case of the internet striking where Hollywood has said lightning can not strike. Pushed out into the cold world, panned by critics, only after its release, it was suddenly struck by lightning when its use of Natasha Bedingfield’s 2004 song “Unwritten” become a viral phenom on TikTok, leading the young Tok’ers to create their own videos set to the tune, and fueling an explosion of excitement for the film.
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An amazing almost unheard of thing to happen to your film; an impossible thing to plan for. It is almost as though we among the internet are mere playthings, just providing building blocks in the hands of the real gods of entertainment — the users of Tik Tok (and YouTube). Few marketing departments go around planning that their movie will get struck by lightning a couple weeks after its release. And if it’s hard to plan for, it’s hard to take credit for. Not that that usually stops anyone.
Congratulations to Sony, for at least continuing to swing (and succeed) in originals But one lesson learned here: These things don’t happen if you don’t release the movie. Put a movie up on big screens and the world might discover things about it that even you don’t notice. Bury it on streaming however, and you’ll never know what you might have had.