Is the Mid-Budget Movie an Endangered Species?

Nicole Sperling

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Is the Mid-Budget Movie an Endangered Species?

It’s Friday, and I’m wishing Anjelica Huston had gone to the Met Ball dressed as actual shade.

Greetings from Los Angeles, where we are pondering the state of the box office, where many smaller-budgeted films have underperformed in recent weeks; contemplating George Clooney’s decision to jump into the streaming world with the six-part Hulu adaptation of Catch-22 and his star, Girls alum Chris Abbott; examining Conan O’Brien’s over settlement his joke-theft lawsuit; and reviewing Poms under the gaze of Huston’s scorn.

Stuck in the Middle

When the Rebel Wilson–Anne Hathaway remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Hustle, opens today on some 3,000 screens, it will not only be battling Avengers and Pokémon Detective Pikachu for box-office returns, but also a general malaise that has hit the market in recent months for the low-to-midsize-budgeted film. Just look at last weekend and the dismal performances for both the new Seth Rogen–Charlize Theron romantic comedy, Long Shot ($9.7 million), and the seemingly kid-friendly UglyDolls ($8.6 million), two films that weren’t necessarily expected to be box-office world crushers, but seemed likely to at least gross in the double digits.

Movies bomb all the time. And often for good reason. But right now, there’s a fear around town that audiences are abandoning two specific categories: mid-market comedies and animated movies. (Last weekend’s soft numbers aren’t just because of the Avengers blackout on the box office.) It’s been a soft year for openings of the latter: Laika’s Missing Link ($5.9 million), Paramount’s Wonder Park ($15.8 million), and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part ($34 million), and even rougher for the former. Should The Hustle fail to reach double digits, it will join Long Shot and a slew of recently released comedies, including The Spy Who Dumped Me, Super Troopers 2, and Holmes & Watson, to name a few, in its inability to connect with consumers. Why? Some industry observers pointed to twin pressures: Disney, which this week announced ambitions to lock up every major weekend through 2022 with its overflowing portfolio of I.P., and streamers, which are working like hell to keep viewers on their couches.

“In general, one is continually surprised how the big movies continue to do amazingly well and the smaller movies are not doing quite the numbers you’d expect,” said one producer who declined to be identified. “That trend continues to push in both directions in quite a scary way. It forces you to become more circumspect in focusing in on the movies you are going to make because you don’t want to be one of those that don’t meet expectations.”

Indeed, quite a few executives I talked to around town in the wake of Disney’s calendar announcement this week lamented the state of the middle. One industry vet said he’d couldn’t believe a Seth Rogen comedy with an 81 percent-fresh rating would gross in the single digits. He was equally flummoxed that Missing Link, which earned an 89 percent-fresh rating and is likely to top out at $18 million domestic gross, made significantly less than two of the Portland-based Laika’s previous endeavors—Coraline ($75 million) and 2016’s Kubo and the Two Strings ($48 million)—despite similar reviews.

By Christian Black/MGM/Everett Collection.

To be sure, this year has had its share of mid-level-budget successes, including Jordan Peele’s Us and the Kevin Hart feature The Upside, and Hollywood is bullish on quite a few titles set to hit theaters this month: Olivia Wilde’s teen comedy Booksmart, the Elton John musical Rocketman, and Ma, the Blumhouse thriller starring Octavia Spencer. What’s concerning is that for the films that don’t work, the rejection is swift and absolute. Movies that could recoup box office in the second and third weeks are pronounced D.O.A. What’s causing this change?

Said one industry insider: “I think that all movies that aren’t giant Marvel movies, or Star Wars, have more competition from streaming services offering compelling content at home. I don’t think it’s a conscious thing. I think if you polled a lot of people, they see massive value in both the theatrical experience and the streaming service. For those of us making movies that aren’t based on global intellectual property, the bar for execution is higher—not just execution in the movie, but learning and paying attention to how specific choices along the way impact your ability to get people to the theater.”

Another high-ranking executive felt differently, saying, “I do not yet see any evidence that audiences who are excited about a movie in a theater aren’t going. If Netflix and the like were any more the cause of death of the movie business than the 10 previous hypothetical [causes of death], I don’t think there would be any reason for any movie that isn’t a giant spectacle to work. There would be no reason for Crazy Rich Asians, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born, A Quiet Place, or Us to succeed. When you make a movie that excites people, that feels theatrical, I think people will still go.”

Among the executives I spoke with, the plan going forward seems to lean into films that are theatrical in nature: movies that people want to experience in a group environment, which could also mean the studio drama, already an endangered species, will still struggle.

“I think you will see a continuing evaporation of the traditional Hollywood drama as a theatrically worthy experience,” said the first executive. “I think laughing out loud, screaming out loud, cheering out loud are all things that are better with 100 or 300 or more people in a big, dark room. Comedy, horror, action, and films with some degree of outward emotional experience—those are the genres we will continue to lean into.”

What does that mean for the lower-budget comedy? For one, the costs need to come down and the humor needs to be an L.O.L. proposition, not just something that will give you a few chuckles.

“I don’t believe comedy is dead,” said the second industry insider. “I believe it is down. So when a genre is underperforming, the costs have to come down. Horror was dead until Jason Blum started making $5 million films. I think, overall, what’s happening in the culture is being reflected in the art. Comedy needs to become less white. Those things are rewarded when they are done well.”

What does that mean for this weekend’s The Hustle? Reviews for the film have been grim. (Rotten Tomatoes has tabulated its fresh rating at a weak 16 percent, with Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips writing, “Whatever I said about Ocean’s Eight, I take it back; that was a paragon of wit compared to this movie.”) And box-office prognosticators have it grossing around $12 million for the weekend. But with previous sure things falling way beneath what many considered the floor, there is a good chance that this remake, even with the star wattage of Hathaway and Wilson, could fall below that.

It’s Clooney’s World, We’re Just Living in It

George Clooney has been on a publicity tear this week, promoting his new six-part Hulu series, Catch-22, due out May 17, which he directed, produced, and also co-stars in. The affable movie star is still as magnanimous and charming as always, and crowds, no matter how small, are still easily intrigued. It helps that Clooney, newly 58 years old, is more self-deprecating than ever, calling out his former status as People’s Sexiest Man Alive while giving his leading man, Chris Abbott, grief for all the states of undress he’s seen in during the course of the World War II-set black comedy. For my report on all things Clooney from his visit to the Television Academy Wednesday night, click here. And for insight into Abbott, check out Evan Romano’s interview with the star. Clooney seems ready to hand over the baton, and it will be interesting to see if Abbott is ready to take it.

Conan Settles It

Joke writing has never been easy and the stakes have only ratcheted up with the advent of social media. So it’s not a surprise that late-night host Conan O’Brien, or any other M.C., would at some point be sued for allegedly poaching another comedian’s joke. O’Brien was scheduled to go to court against San Diego-based writer Robert Alexander (“Alex”) Kaseberg this month, but rather than engage in the lengthy court process, he settled, though not before explaining himself in an editorial printed in Variety Thursday. My colleague Laura Bradley takes a closer look at the implications of O’Brien’s settlement, writing:

“The Trump era has turned the late-night monologue-writing process into a high-pressure situation, in which writers must quickly respond to news with, hopefully, as little overlap as possible with their fellow comedians—both on the air and on social media.”

For her full report, click here.

Poms Reading

Vanity Fair film critic Richard Lawson wanted to love Poms, if only to spite Anjelica Huston, who recently trashed the very premise of the movie in a widely read interview with New York magazine: “I’m looking for movies that impress me in some way, that aren’t apologetically humble or humiliating like, ‘Band of cheerleaders gets back together for one last hurrah,’ you know. An old-lady cheerleader movie. I don’t like that kind of thing.” Unfortunately, Lawson just couldn’t get behind the Diane Keaton vehicle that sees the actress, alongside co-star Jacki Weaver, attempting to form a cheerleading club inside her sunny, Georgia-based retirement home. (A location that reads differently in light of the state’s recent abortion ban, but I digress.)

Said Lawson of the film, directed by Zara Hayes and co-written by Hayes and Shane Atkinson, “[It’s] an abject mess, a movie so poorly built it feels like every other scene is missing—as if after production was wrapped and the movie was in the can, some P.A. found boxes marked ‘character’ and ’plot’ in a storage room and realized they forgot to use them during production.”

And that’s it for the week in Hollywood! Tell me what else you’re seeing out there, and let me know what you want to read. Send tips, comments, and your favorite underrated comedy that must be seen in theaters to Nicole_Sperling@condenast.com. Follow me on Twitter @nicsperling. If you received this e-mail from a friend and would like to subscribe to the newsletter, head on over here.