This weekend is yet more proof that everything the so-called experts tell us about the box office is a politically driven lie.
For the last two years, as every woketard film flopped, instead of blaming the flop on the quality of the movie or its overall appeal, we’ve been told the flop is the China Flu’s fault. Old people are scared of dying and won’t go out to the theater, they tell us.
Again and again, Breitbart News has debunked that lie, and now we have another weekend debunking that lie.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin was projected to open somewhere between $21 and $24 million. Instead, it flat-lined at $14.2 million. Could it be that people weren’t interested in a movie that offered up two gay dads as protagonists? I think it could. Something Hollywood forgets is that the primary appeal of any story, including a movie, is the audience identifying in some way with the lead character(s). We want to relate to them, to see ourselves in them. How many gay dads do we have in America? How many people believe they will someday grow up to be gay dads? Not many. How many people are made uncomfortable by a romantic same-sex couple? Pretty much everyone.
Now we come to the lie about older people refusing to return to the movies…
80 for Brady stars three actresses over the age of 80 (Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin). The fourth star, Sally Field, turns 77 this year. Guess what? 80 for Brady opened to $12.5 million this weekend. Not only that, due to discounted tickets, it drew more admissions than Knock at the Cabin — 1.3 million to 1.1 million.
What? A movie starring old ladies drew more customers than a slick horror entry helmed by a name-director starring Dave Bautista and one of the Harry Potter kids? How is that possible?
Well, duh… People of a certain age can relate to a quartet of old ladies refusing to sit at home waiting for death to jump out from behind the couch. All kinds of old people want to live vicariously through people they can identify with living out one more crazy dream—in this case going to the Super Bowl.
Another old person’s movie is Tom Hanks’ A Man Called Otto, which has earned $53 million so far.
Oh, and people are so hungry for Christian content that the season three finale of Chosen, which is available for free on streaming, grossed $5.3 million.
Finally, there’s Puss in Boots: Last Wish, which dropped 24 percent in its seventh weekend. That’s an amazing hold. This non-woke sequel to a spin-off of a ten-year-old movie has grossed $151 million domestic and another $217.3 million overseas. That’s $369 million worldwide. Disney’s woke Lightyear petered out at $118 million domestic and $226 million worldwide. Disney’s woke Strange New World grossed just $38 million domestic and $73 million worldwide. Gee, maybe we Trumptards are correct; maybe parents don’t want to leave the theater having to explain alternate sexual lifestyles to their five-year-old.
Hollywood’s woke crusade is costing them billions, and not just in production costs but the money left on the table. All of these woke flops would have earned more money with the woke extracted. What’s more, there’s the money lost on people who are fed up, who won’t go to the theater for any reason because they no longer trust the industry to do anything but shame and preach. Good grief, look at all the Oscar-bait movies that flopped. That’s a trust problem right there. That’s your audience saying, If there’s Oscar talk around this title it must really stink.
The entertainment industry thinks it can win this war of attrition, thinks that through repetition it can wear us down to where we get used to two hairy guys making out. Well, that’s not going to happen. You can’t rewire human nature and you can’t draw people to stories lacking in characters they can relate to or identify with.
These are the basics of storytelling, and the basics are the basics for a reason.
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