u/FOC615

There has been a fair amount of discussion about Will Gluck’s comments regarding the test screenings for “One Night Only” and their response to the nudity in earlier cuts of the movie. Let us assume that Gluck is accurately describing the data. I have severe doubts that he reached the correct conclusion that “younger audiences don’t like sex/nudity” in movies. If you look at the last several years if Box Office data, then the picture becomes much more nuanced.

Contrary to Gluck’s framing, younger audiences seem to like movies that feature sex and nudity quite a bit, but only when it is framed correctly. They tend to be movies in genres that do not open to exceptionally large opening weekends, but have very strong legs and achieve very good multiples on their opening weekends:

• Fifty Shades of Grey. Audience skew: 78% female. Domestic legs 1.95x (big opening weekend)
• Fifty Shades Darker. Audience skew: 78% female, 30% under 25. Domestic legs: 2.4x
• Atomic Blonde. Audience skew: 52% female, 32% under 25. Domestic legs: 2.82x
• Fifty Shades Freed. Audience skew: 81% female, 59% women 25+. Domestic legs: 2.6x
• Hustlers. Audience skew: 67% female, 63% 18-34. Domestic legs: 3.16x
• X. Audience skew: 45% female, 73% 18-34. Domestic legs: 3.36x
• No Hard Feelings. Audience skew: 50% female, 64% 18-34, Domestic legs: 3.36x
• Anyone But You (Gluck’s prior film!). Audience skew: 50% female, 60% 18-34, Domestic legs: 9.06x
• Poor Things. Audience skew: 44% female, 70% under 35, Platform release that did very well.
• The Substance. Audience skew: 38% female, 64% 18-34, Domestic legs: 5.49x
• Anora. Audience skew: 70% female, 85% under 35. Very successful platform release.
• Babygirl. Audience skew: 36% 18-34. Domestic legs: 6.27x

The consistent theme is that the nudity is presented generally in a certain way.

1. It is the female protagonist who appears nude.
2. She is asserting her agency by taking her clothes off, or at least consenting to something.
3. It is consistent with the rest of the film (i.e. not gratuitous)

Contrast these with movies that didn’t perform at the Box Office, like Babylon. I happen to have liked Babylon, where the debauchery is mostly being conveyed by female extras in large party scenes. That seems to be similar to what Gluck’s test audiences responded negatively toward.

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In 2006, Anne Hathaway was making The Leap from teen actress to Movie Star. She had some adult dramas, but not as the lead. She left KNOCKED UP and went on to star in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, which was her breakout.

But what if she made SUPERMAN RETURNS instead?

Let me state upfront that I consider Hathaway to be the best Lois Lane to never play the role. She has the look, the natural intelligence, and charisma to join Margot Kidder, Teri Hatcher, and Rachel Brosnahan on the Mt. Rushmore. But does she fix that deeply flawed movie:

• Hathaway and Kate Bosworth are roughly the same age, so it does it fix the issue of a Pulitzer Prize winning, single mom in her early 20s. That is a strike.
• Hathaway and Brandon Routh have never acted together, so it is unknown whether would fix the shaky romantic chemistry in the center of the movie.
• On the other hand, Hathaway is a Movie Star and that quality is pretty innate. Kate Bosworth is a good actress, but she doesn’t have that quality.
• While Bosworth is certainly smart enough in real life (she apparently got into Princeton), she does not project intelligence the way Hathaway does.

It is an interesting thought experiment. On balance, I think Hathaway probably moves SUPERMAN RETURNS closer to BATMAN BEGINS. A profitable movie and a potential franchise starter, but not a massive hit.

Will Smith as Muhammad Ali

It may not share any creative people, but I tend to think of Michael Mann's ALI as a sequel to Spike Lee's MALCOLM X.

While Denzel Washington and Mario Van Pebbles are playing Malcolm X in different registers, the two films share a very similar theory of the man as a character. The arc is essentially the same as Ned Stark's in GAME OF THRONES: noble, morally correct man doomed by his inability to bend to a corrupted world.

You essentially need to understand the arc of Malcom X's life from that perspective to appreciate what is happening in the larger world as he comes into and out of Muhammad Ali's life. It is almost like THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER, PART II where the events of one clarify and contextualize the events of the other.

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Let me state upfront that I thought Supergirl was a mortal lock to at least break-even at the Box Office. The budget seemed reasonable, Superman had been a hit last summer, and Alcock is an appealing actress. While all those things remain true, the film itself is proving to be a massive bomb.

Next, the quality of the film itself does not seem to be the primary issue. It is not great, but other superhero films of much lower quality have done much better commercially. So, what is the issue?

1. It is targeted at the wrong audience. Young (under 25) women have been leaving the superhero genre since at least 2020. Harley Quinn And The Birds Of Prey, which was a similarly female-targeted superhero movie, failed to attracted Gen Z women. The Marvels had the same issue in 2023. The Arrowverse on the younger female skewing CW Network petered out around 2021. Older men have become the core demo of superheroes with younger men still watching material, like The Boys and Invincible, which are targeted to them. Older women are the secondary audience for female-led superhero projects.
2. It targeted that audience in the wrong way. Recent movies that were hits and have been led by a younger, female audience include: Barbie, Wicked, and It Ends With Us. Those are all movies with very girly aesthetics. Those movies looked 180 degrees away from the dirty, “Thelma & Louise” inspired look that director Craig Gillespie chose for this movie.
3. With its core demo off the board, Supergirl was never going to be a hit. However, it could have limped to break-even were it not for the toxicity of the DC brand. Since Harley Quinn, every DC movie that was not personally written and directed by James Gunn has been bad. Often embarrassingly so. Similarly, the Arrowverse over-produced content to the point that multiple DC characters have a negative association with them. That includes Supergirl, which declined from nearly 10 million viewers on CBS to 800,000 in its final season on the CW.
4. DC did not really make a clean break with its prior projects. It is pretty clear that the Gunn projects (Peacemaker, Creature Commandos, Superman) have their own identity tied to the film-maker. But Supergirl didn’t look meaningfully different than the lackluster, CGI-driven films of the prior era. No one was talking about the 70mm IMAX cameras that they shot Supergirl on.
5. The word-of-mouth was horrible. I saw Supergirl on opening weekend and expected something much worse than what I saw. The issue was an episodic, occasionally incoherent script. The plot was very much “one damn thing after another”, which becomes boring. Nothing is set-up and nothing is paid-off. Modern audiences hate being bored.

It is weird that Chris Ryan, who is mostly an entertainment guy at The Ringer, often has the best sports takes. He said something today that really gets lost in all the transaction talk.

As a fan, you really do want to form a relationship with these guys. You want to see your team draft them, watch them grow, see the become successful (ideally culminating in a Title, or three), and get their jersey retired. The core benefit of sports is that gives you an outlet to feel stuff. The only way to really access that is a relationship with a group of players over time.

Otherwise, the NBA just becomes TikTok all the way down. Maybe that is inevitable, but I am not sure that it sustainable.