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In Hollywood, the first weekend of May is traditionally seen as the official kick-off of the summer movie season: an auspicious blockbuster date that has, of late, become rather a boring one.
Since 2007, when Spider-Man 3 (three full cycles ago in that deathless franchise) topped the box office – and barring two years where the global pandemic threw the mainstream release schedule into disarray – that weekend has been the exclusive domain of Marvel superhero adaptations, through to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 claiming the No 1 spot last May. That stranglehold was set to continue this year, with the legacy-milking superhero mash-up comedy Deadpool & Wolverine scheduled for a 3 May release. It doubtless would have creamed the competition, too, had last year’s Hollywood strikes not delayed it to July.
And so, with the coveted early-May date open to a cape-free blockbuster for the first time since the Bush administration, Universal spotted an opportunity for its action romcom The Fall Guy, about a Hollywood stunt man tangled in an insider conspiracy.
They had reason to be confident. Ryan Gosling was riding a wave of public goodwill after his film-stealing turn in last year’s top grosser Barbie; pairing him with Emily Blunt, fresh from her appearance in Barbie’s summer sibling Oppenheimer, was a neat marketing angle the stars gamely launched as a presenting duo at the Oscars in March. Two days later, the film premiered to jubilant audience reactions at the hip SXSW festival. It seemed director David Leitch, who drove the comparably goofy action flick Bullet Train to a $240m gross in 2022, had another hit on his hands.
Or not, as it turned out. The Fall Guy opened modestly in the US, taking a little over $27m in its first weekend. At the time of writing, it’s made nearly $108m worldwide – not a bomb, but not a palpable hit either. Reviews have been solid; audience scores are good. All indications are that it’s a crowdpleaser, at least for the medium-sized crowds that are showing up. But why aren’t they bigger?
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Yeah, we’re all broke and the price of everything is rising. I’d love to see more movies in theaters, but I gotta make rent…
Between paying for a babysitter and parking and a small bit of popcorn, along with the tickets, it costs us about 100e to go to the cinema. And that’s without even going anywhere else before or after.
The movies just came out. I’d like to see Fall Guy in a theater but I’m busy, even movies that come out on streaming still take me a few weeks if not months to get to. I got shit to do.
Hollywood really needs to stop declaring flops within the first few weeks, whether it’s streaming or films in theaters. I really wish things were allowed to grow organically. Video games are essentially in the same boat. Unlike my dad who stopped watching movies because of the “Hollywood liberals” I’ve stopped watching/buying any new movies/tv shows/video games because everyone is looking for an immediate smash hit. I give them at least a year now. If enough people are still talking about it, I might buy it.
I finally watched the first Dune last month, still on the fence about buying Baldur’s Gate 3, I’ll probably get around to it eventually.
After wasting all that time typing this out, I realize that I don’t really care that much. The producers and powers that be don’t care about me so I’m not their target demographic. But, I take comfort in the fact that by the time I get to some new(to me) piece of media that it’ll be good because it stood the test of time(at least for a year or so).
I agree, immediate smash hits are more of a reflection of the advertising than the actual medium.
I’m like you. Really wanted to watch Dune2 in the theater but needed to watch Dune1 before but never got around to it in time. By the time we watched Dune1, Dune2 was already out of the theater! Oops. My bad.
Another problem with the theater is that my tv and surround sound are good enough and I get about 85% of the movie theater experience without the cost / hassle.
My girlfriend and I saw Fall Guys and it’s a great movie!
We originally stumbled upon the Parmount Plus series “Action” about the modern history of Hollywood stunts and loved it. It follows the company that made the John Wick movies, same people made Fall Guy.
The show actually had behind the scenes for Fall Guy stunts pre-release and it was wicked cool. I think part of the flop is from bad marketing. I’d wager nobody knows that show exists and their trailers DO NOT make it clear that all the stunts are practical.
The whole movie is meant to be an homage to classic stunts and they actually broke the record for a car roll. I think if they’d found a clever way to showcase all that intention with the marketing a lot more people would have seen it.
Can confirm Fall Guy was very solid, didn’t think it was gonna be anything memorable but we ended up really liking it.
Yes, I did a double feature of Godzilla x Kong then Fall Guy and the latter was far more entertaining.
Huh!
My impression of Godzilla x Kong, as someone who’s generally enjoyed that franchise, is that it’s basically reached a sort of “strangely calm and abstract animated cartoon vibe”. Which I’m probably down for, but which is also probably just not as entertaining as many would expect.
Two movies might not do as well as expected, maybe = Every Big Movie Is Flopping!!!
🙄
I think the issue is that May is usually a big earner for the film industry but everything is under-performing so far. However, as they mention, the writer’s strike has pushed films back a month or two and I expect the start of the blockbuster season will be with the release of Furiosa this week but it should have an easy run at the box office as things are quiet until mid June into July: Inside Out 2, Quiet Place: Day One, Despicable Me 4, Twisters? and then Deadpool & Wolverine which is shaping up to be the big hit of the summer, unless Borderlands is better than it looks. Alien: Romulus and Beetlejuice² then finish out through to September. That’s a lot of heavy lifting being done by franchises with only films like Sting and The Watched having much potential to be breakout original hits.
Megalopolis isn’t even playing in theaters yet. It was just shown at Cannes. How can something that hasn’t even been sold to a wider audience be a flop?
The rest of the movies mentioned just came out. Give 'em some freaking time to simmer.
Its cause Fall Guy looked too generic in the trailers, its actually pretty decent. Megalopolis looks pretty bad, i can see that one being a flop
Thanks for sharing!
I will be supporting megalopolis regardless
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Since 2007, when Spider-Man 3 (three full cycles ago in that deathless franchise) topped the box office – and barring two years where the global pandemic threw the mainstream release schedule into disarray – that weekend has been the exclusive domain of Marvel superhero adaptations, through to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
And so, with the coveted early-May date open to a cape-free blockbuster for the first time since the Bush administration, Universal spotted an opportunity for its action romcom The Fall Guy, about a Hollywood stunt man tangled in an insider conspiracy.
The story of last year’s summer box office was the aforementioned Barbie–Oppenheimer double – disparate films that turned the rather banal fact of a shared release date into a wildly successful marketing gimmick, as audiences fashioned “Barbenheimer” into a double-feature roadshow with little official prompting from the studios.
Greta Gerwig’s loopy metatextual approach to Barbie looked and felt like nothing else at the multiplex; ditto Christopher Nolan’s rather sober three-hour chamber film, which, notwithstanding one spectacular explosion scene, riskily banked on the more arthouse-inclined pitch of men debating strategy and morality in dim rooms.
The summer ahead has few sure things on the horizon: as the only major superhero release of the season, much will ride on Deadpool & Wolverine to prove the genre’s continued commercial muscle, while the fate of sequels such as Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, A Quiet Place: Day One and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – launched at Cannes last week with a defiantly glitzy premiere – will tell anxious studios if they really do need to change course.
Meanwhile, the year’s most belated franchise extension – Twisters, a sequel to the 1996 tornado adventure – may or may not be a nostalgia-fuelled hit, but it’ll certainly make studio execs think back fondly on easier days, when a new idea wasn’t the fall guy.
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