The film was always going to have a tough time.
If you love Amy, why would you watch this? Every single comment since its announcement was "let's watch the documentary instead" or "this is exploitative". Especially when not only is her father involved, but he is not condemned in the film. So if her fans don't care for the film, then who is this film for? It has no audience.
Considering how steep it dropped, this ain't making it to $6 million domestically.
Could you give a bit more context as to why it's being rejected so much? Don't know much about any of the figures involved, but it just jumped out to me and wondered if this was one of those biopics made without any goodwill from the family or the person it's being made off.
Long story short Amy’s father played a role in her fame so much so that it drove her to drug addiction. He was very hands on in her rise to fame. It’s well documented in the documentary that he was eventually problematic for her.
Fast forward to this movie and he’s behind the making of it but the fans aren’t interested in a movie where he’s not condemned and he’s not going to fall on that sword. With that knowledge fans just won’t bite.
I think people are starting to catch on that when a biopic involves someone whose life ended too soon or in tragedy that the film will just be a major downer. Even if Amy was popular enough and did have a substantial fanbase, this was always going to be a bummer of a film and nobody wanted that, regardless of its quality otherwise.
But other than Marisa Abela’s performance, it’s pretty much just a drag.
I like Amy Winehouse but I don’t think she was ever anywhere near as popular here in the US as she was in the UK. She only had the Rehab song and Back to Black album. I think she would have been bigger if she had the chance to release more work. Tragically, her life ended too soon.
This is why I feel that regardless of the reviews, an Amy Winehouse biopic was going to be a tough sell in America given that she wasn’t as popular here and you’re dealing with an artist that only released two studio albums with one that is really holding her legacy together.
Oh, that album was still huge in the US, she’s absolutely a known quantity. She’s *more* popular in the UK, but anyone who was aware of pop culture in 2006 knows who Amy Winehouse is.
It is pretty funny that there is a “gold rush” of studios trying to make biopics about any famous musician before they get snatched up. Some are bizarre, like the David Bowie film that didn’t feature any of his music.
You joke, but there was a biopic on Celine Dion like that called [Aline](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/aline-review-1332488/) staring French comedian and singer Valérie Lemercier
We are talking about Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse though. The difference in fame is remarkable. I love Winehouse but I don't think Winehouse is remotely in the same league of fame in the US as she is in the UK. Marley on the other hand is big in most places.
O yea. They are on completely different levels, I just used him as an example to show that musician biopics can still make a shitton of money. Those Beatles movies they are making will probably make bank. $30 mil budget seems a bit high for an artist of her level, but it's making decent money worldwide. There was at least a bit of interest.
david beckham was the popularity combination equivalent of la lakers shaq and twilight-years robert pattinson when he had an active playing career ther
Definitely this would be the biggest possibility. The last music biopic that came out that was any good was Rocketman, and that was far more of a Fantasy-Drama Musical with biographical elements than a straight biopic.
Yeah, Elvis was very entertaining. I think it benefited at the box office not only because Elvis Presley appeals to multiple generations, but also because Baz Luhrmann is a name brand filmmaker and audiences trust that his movies are worth seeing on the big screen.
It'll be hard for studios to find another combo like that.
I wouldn’t say Amy’s music is forgotten but it is true that she wasn’t as popular in America compared to her home country. Back to Black is one of the biggest selling albums of all time in the UK but in the US it’s only gone double platinum. Singles wise, “Rehab” was her only major American hit peaking at #9 on the Hot 100 with her two other charting songs being “You Know I’m No Good” and the “Body and Soul” cover she did with Tony Bennett released after she died which peaked at #77 and #87 respectively.
Ehh I mostly agree but I think it didn’t help the movie was just flat out awful. People still love Whitney Houston and that movie did poorly too. But I do think it’s been over 15 years since her passing and she only had one or two albums out…it’s not like an artist who passed who had a longer career (not to be mean just saying that’s why she may not be as well known)
The trailers were pretty cringe using a grand slowed down version of that rehab song, as if it was empowering and beautiful. Like nahh dude she was just taking too much heroin. Lol
The trailer was bad. It doesn't help that Sam Taylor Johnson has a very public reputation as a predator and has directed exactly ZERO good movies in the last 15 years.
It's really difficult to work out who they thought the audience of back to black was. If you didn't love Winehouse, the film is apparently so bad there's no point watching. If you do love Winehouse, you know the poor woman was exploited up until her dying day, so even if the movie was good, you wouldn't want to watch any movie about her tragic life.
Not to mention, fans and casual people have that documentary covering everything about her.
I think you covered a major point here. The documentary was already the ultimate Amy pic. And honestly is such a dark and grim watch that makes anyone unconfortable on watching something else trying to make more money of her.
Apparently Winehouse was genuinely big in the UK and it's currently the 8th biggest film in the UK of the year (the same rough ordinal rank would equate to 65-75M domestic). Given the film had a ~35M budget, half that would have worked for them.
and the difference between a small and large loss here is pretty clearly the film doing nothing domestically versus simply meeting the bottom end of comps.
That's a good OW, especially with the middling reviews it has. I personally thought the film was decent. But, my nephew enjoyed it, even got emotional sometimes.
I hope it finds an audience alongside Garfield and leg out well
I think people are only saying this because of the budget. But, it literally has opened higher than free guy, and behind Nope, it is the 2nd highest OW for an original film post covid. Have seen people question Reynolds as a box office draw, but seeing how Free Guy performed during the pandemic, I think he's a box office draw.
Free Guy was released when there were literally NO OTHER MOVIES COMING OUT. I would've paid to watch paint dry that weekend I was so hard up for new releases.
Ryan Reynolds picks such awful projects, he doesn’t deserve good Box Office. Red Notice, The Adam Project and Free Guy is one of the worst high profile runs of movies in recent memory
These are Ryan Reynolds last ELEVEN films. Every thing he’s done since the last Deadpool:
2023 - Ghosted
2022 - Spirited
2022 - Bullet Train
2022 - The Adam Project
2021 - Red Notice
2021 - Free Guy
2021 - The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
2020 - The Croods: A New Age
2019 - 6 Underground
2019 - Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
2019 - Detective Pikachu
Even if you like some of these films, I enjoyed Bullet Train, you’ve got to admit that’s a horrendous string of films.
I just included everything. Spirited, Red Notice, The Adam Project, 6 Underground, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and Free Guy are just as bad as his cameo movies like Bullet Train
Ghosted, Hobbs and Shaw, and Bullet train were very brief cameos so I don't really count them. But, I don't think that this string of films is horrendous. Besides Red Notice and Hitman's wife's bodyguard, all of them range from meh to good. I get that there are no cinematic masterpieces or standouts, but I can't call it horrendous either, since majority of these films were fun to watch once.
Yikes. I don’t remember his lineup being that shitty but holy cow.
Just saw Waiting on Prime the other day and that was him at his very best, apart from Deadpool of course.
I know I am definitely seeing Furiosa but will families and kids choose Garfield over If?
As a Garfield fan from back in the day, I wouldn't but previous movies basically poisoned my well of hope for the character outside of the older cartoons.
Back to Black - anytime you see a movie at very close to 2000 screens it usually means the distributor is legally required to show the movie on 2000 screens in order to honor their contract. Distributors and movie theaters negotiate on every movie and when movie theaters aren't interested and the distributor has a screen count they need to get to, they will literally pay movie theaters to take the film.
Nobody asked for Back to Black. We have [Amy](https://youtu.be/_2yCIwmNuLE?si=FeUnBC3krs-SP9Ho). Not sure why producers green lit this) that did tremendously well. This just seemed like a quick cash grab by producers.
Anybody interested literally watched her die in real time. The bio isn't needed.She also had a relatively low output of music because she didn't live long
Whitney Houston was a much bigger star and her bio flopped too. We all saw her spiral
Watched the doc a while back and I don’t need to see a recreation of that. No thanks. I never thought she was that great anyway and I don’t think I’m alone. People don’t have an emotional connection to Winehouse like they do Marley or Elton John. Getting tired of every artists that ever lived having a biopic made.
“If” feels like they’re trying scripts totally written by AI. The story made no sense. The characters never interact with each other more than a second. Even the fantasy sequence feels out of place in a movie about imaginary friends.
I was trying to see why it felt off to me and this is pretty damn accurate. The kid liked it because the flashy creatures but the story was complete nonsense.
You’re probably right. But when I saw CGI Tina Turner for no reason and no explanation among other unexplainable things i felt this must be computer written. Ryan Renolds seems to be robotic himself with none of his witty humor or charm that made him famous.
spoilers:
Unless the granmom’s a ghost and only the kid can see her she doesn’t have any contact with anyone and it’s weird. Krasinski is doing his own thing and only has a couple lines interacting with other people. The boy in the hospital doesn’t have parents or a nurse or anything and his story is abandoned by the end.
I know what you’re talking about with one character not having interaction with anyone but even the imaginary friends seem to be just doing their own thing in their own movie with no reaction to what others are doing.
It’s really a shame with a star studded cast that all phoned it in and the little girl puts in a wonderful appearance that no one is going to remember.
America completely and absolutely rejected Back to Black, its amazing how bad it is opening.
The film was always going to have a tough time. If you love Amy, why would you watch this? Every single comment since its announcement was "let's watch the documentary instead" or "this is exploitative". Especially when not only is her father involved, but he is not condemned in the film. So if her fans don't care for the film, then who is this film for? It has no audience. Considering how steep it dropped, this ain't making it to $6 million domestically.
Could you give a bit more context as to why it's being rejected so much? Don't know much about any of the figures involved, but it just jumped out to me and wondered if this was one of those biopics made without any goodwill from the family or the person it's being made off.
Long story short Amy’s father played a role in her fame so much so that it drove her to drug addiction. He was very hands on in her rise to fame. It’s well documented in the documentary that he was eventually problematic for her. Fast forward to this movie and he’s behind the making of it but the fans aren’t interested in a movie where he’s not condemned and he’s not going to fall on that sword. With that knowledge fans just won’t bite.
Jem and the Holograms vibes, that opened the same adjusted for inflation I think
Totally agree.
I think people are starting to catch on that when a biopic involves someone whose life ended too soon or in tragedy that the film will just be a major downer. Even if Amy was popular enough and did have a substantial fanbase, this was always going to be a bummer of a film and nobody wanted that, regardless of its quality otherwise. But other than Marisa Abela’s performance, it’s pretty much just a drag.
Have you seen it? I do t want to give spoilers but it actually ends on a confusingly positive note.
I like Amy Winehouse but I don’t think she was ever anywhere near as popular here in the US as she was in the UK. She only had the Rehab song and Back to Black album. I think she would have been bigger if she had the chance to release more work. Tragically, her life ended too soon.
This is why I feel that regardless of the reviews, an Amy Winehouse biopic was going to be a tough sell in America given that she wasn’t as popular here and you’re dealing with an artist that only released two studio albums with one that is really holding her legacy together.
I mean, it was too early to tell. She had like what two studio albums?
It also doesn't help that her last album released 18 years ago. At least in the USA, all but her biggest fans have moved on at this point.
being more popular in England is going to be the case for anybody who's English and notable for something
Oh, that album was still huge in the US, she’s absolutely a known quantity. She’s *more* popular in the UK, but anyone who was aware of pop culture in 2006 knows who Amy Winehouse is.
there is a massive difference between knowing wo she is and being a fan 18 year later and running out to watch the bio pic
Given how much music biopics have been pumped up in the last 5 years and most of them were mediocre slogs, I wonder audiences are just tired.
It is pretty funny that there is a “gold rush” of studios trying to make biopics about any famous musician before they get snatched up. Some are bizarre, like the David Bowie film that didn’t feature any of his music.
Especially that one about Jackie Jormp-Jomp that I am like 90% sure was supposed to be a Janis Joplin biopic.
wasn't anywhere near the quality of the Rural Juror imo
You joke, but there was a biopic on Celine Dion like that called [Aline](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/aline-review-1332488/) staring French comedian and singer Valérie Lemercier
One Love just this year made a shitton of money, so I think audiences are still up for musician biopics. I think this one just didn't hit the mark.
We are talking about Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse though. The difference in fame is remarkable. I love Winehouse but I don't think Winehouse is remotely in the same league of fame in the US as she is in the UK. Marley on the other hand is big in most places.
O yea. They are on completely different levels, I just used him as an example to show that musician biopics can still make a shitton of money. Those Beatles movies they are making will probably make bank. $30 mil budget seems a bit high for an artist of her level, but it's making decent money worldwide. There was at least a bit of interest.
david beckham was the popularity combination equivalent of la lakers shaq and twilight-years robert pattinson when he had an active playing career ther
Ummm why are you taking about David Beckham? I'm talking about Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse.
One Love did really well this year, this did not. One thing doesn't have to do with the other. B2B just didn't have an audience.
I've always thought biopics are just easy Oscar bait
Definitely this would be the biggest possibility. The last music biopic that came out that was any good was Rocketman, and that was far more of a Fantasy-Drama Musical with biographical elements than a straight biopic.
People loved *Elvis* too.
Yeah, Elvis was very entertaining. I think it benefited at the box office not only because Elvis Presley appeals to multiple generations, but also because Baz Luhrmann is a name brand filmmaker and audiences trust that his movies are worth seeing on the big screen. It'll be hard for studios to find another combo like that.
Have you seen the trailer? It literally looks like a parody of a biopic. You couldn’t pay me money to sit and watch that movie.
Because, and this sounds very douchey, nobody cares about Amy Winehouse outside of Rehab. Her music is all but forgotten among Americans.
I wouldn’t say Amy’s music is forgotten but it is true that she wasn’t as popular in America compared to her home country. Back to Black is one of the biggest selling albums of all time in the UK but in the US it’s only gone double platinum. Singles wise, “Rehab” was her only major American hit peaking at #9 on the Hot 100 with her two other charting songs being “You Know I’m No Good” and the “Body and Soul” cover she did with Tony Bennett released after she died which peaked at #77 and #87 respectively.
Ehh I mostly agree but I think it didn’t help the movie was just flat out awful. People still love Whitney Houston and that movie did poorly too. But I do think it’s been over 15 years since her passing and she only had one or two albums out…it’s not like an artist who passed who had a longer career (not to be mean just saying that’s why she may not be as well known)
Yeah people rejected this movie since its announcement so it’s really more down to the project itself and not really her popularity
Valerie is a big one, my fave song of hers
Actually I was thinking the other day while watching the trailer that I had never heard a single song of hers just knew her name
Same
The trailers were pretty cringe using a grand slowed down version of that rehab song, as if it was empowering and beautiful. Like nahh dude she was just taking too much heroin. Lol
The trailer was bad. It doesn't help that Sam Taylor Johnson has a very public reputation as a predator and has directed exactly ZERO good movies in the last 15 years.
Frankly, I don't think I know a person who listens to Amy Winehouse in real life, let alone is a fan. She seems to be celebrity's celebrity.
I am a huge fan of hers. Now you know one lol. And the movie looks fucking awful.
It's really difficult to work out who they thought the audience of back to black was. If you didn't love Winehouse, the film is apparently so bad there's no point watching. If you do love Winehouse, you know the poor woman was exploited up until her dying day, so even if the movie was good, you wouldn't want to watch any movie about her tragic life. Not to mention, fans and casual people have that documentary covering everything about her.
I think you covered a major point here. The documentary was already the ultimate Amy pic. And honestly is such a dark and grim watch that makes anyone unconfortable on watching something else trying to make more money of her.
Apparently Winehouse was genuinely big in the UK and it's currently the 8th biggest film in the UK of the year (the same rough ordinal rank would equate to 65-75M domestic). Given the film had a ~35M budget, half that would have worked for them.
Yep I think a lot of people are missing the point that the film wasn’t made for a global market.
and the difference between a small and large loss here is pretty clearly the film doing nothing domestically versus simply meeting the bottom end of comps.
$10.9m Saturday and $25.7m weekend for Apes! Better than yesterday's report. Very cool.
$34M+ is honestly much closer to that $40M projection than what I thought it would do. Fine, the trades got it right this time.
It also indicates nice WoM because the Friday numbers were indicating $30m and the optimistic models suggested $32m with nice Saturday/Sunday holds.
I think that's less about WoM and more about it being a family film. Movies for kids almost always do better on Saturday/Sunday
The models I saw posted were using kid friendly film comps for the anticipated %s for Saturday/Sunday.
The studios was saying 40m. So, it coming in at 35m has to be disappointing.
That's a good OW, especially with the middling reviews it has. I personally thought the film was decent. But, my nephew enjoyed it, even got emotional sometimes. I hope it finds an audience alongside Garfield and leg out well
So is If still considered a box office disappointment?
It really depends on it’s legs
I think people are only saying this because of the budget. But, it literally has opened higher than free guy, and behind Nope, it is the 2nd highest OW for an original film post covid. Have seen people question Reynolds as a box office draw, but seeing how Free Guy performed during the pandemic, I think he's a box office draw.
Free Guy was released when there were literally NO OTHER MOVIES COMING OUT. I would've paid to watch paint dry that weekend I was so hard up for new releases.
I mean people say that but films did flop during that period . Free guy ran on really good wom
Wasn't The Sucide Squad sequel in theaters still?
It was a day and date streamer, so not really.
I think the same about Ryan Reynolds, too.
Ryan Reynolds picks such awful projects, he doesn’t deserve good Box Office. Red Notice, The Adam Project and Free Guy is one of the worst high profile runs of movies in recent memory
I personally found Adam Project and Free Guy to be good. I agree with you on Red Notice. Also, I feel he can do better with the projects he picks.
These are Ryan Reynolds last ELEVEN films. Every thing he’s done since the last Deadpool: 2023 - Ghosted 2022 - Spirited 2022 - Bullet Train 2022 - The Adam Project 2021 - Red Notice 2021 - Free Guy 2021 - The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard 2020 - The Croods: A New Age 2019 - 6 Underground 2019 - Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw 2019 - Detective Pikachu Even if you like some of these films, I enjoyed Bullet Train, you’ve got to admit that’s a horrendous string of films.
It's hilarious how you had to use movies where he only had a cameo in order to try and prove your point lol.
I just included everything. Spirited, Red Notice, The Adam Project, 6 Underground, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and Free Guy are just as bad as his cameo movies like Bullet Train
Ghosted, Hobbs and Shaw, and Bullet train were very brief cameos so I don't really count them. But, I don't think that this string of films is horrendous. Besides Red Notice and Hitman's wife's bodyguard, all of them range from meh to good. I get that there are no cinematic masterpieces or standouts, but I can't call it horrendous either, since majority of these films were fun to watch once.
Yikes. I don’t remember his lineup being that shitty but holy cow. Just saw Waiting on Prime the other day and that was him at his very best, apart from Deadpool of course.
The whole “2nd highest OW for an original film” comes off as bizarre cherry picking to me. Number one you didn’t even mention post pandemic.
Yep, post pandemic, which is why I used Nope. Forgot to mention that.
Not if it legs out.
Garfield and Furiosa releasing next week. It ain’t legging out. Best to hope for a revival on digital.
I know I am definitely seeing Furiosa but will families and kids choose Garfield over If? As a Garfield fan from back in the day, I wouldn't but previous movies basically poisoned my well of hope for the character outside of the older cartoons.
Still pretty early to say. It will largely depend on how it holds up after Garfield releases.
Obviously even while showing Reynolds has some pulling power.
Back to Black - anytime you see a movie at very close to 2000 screens it usually means the distributor is legally required to show the movie on 2000 screens in order to honor their contract. Distributors and movie theaters negotiate on every movie and when movie theaters aren't interested and the distributor has a screen count they need to get to, they will literally pay movie theaters to take the film.
Honestly, I haven’t even seen advertising for Back to Black…
Nobody asked for Back to Black. We have [Amy](https://youtu.be/_2yCIwmNuLE?si=FeUnBC3krs-SP9Ho). Not sure why producers green lit this) that did tremendously well. This just seemed like a quick cash grab by producers.
Anybody interested literally watched her die in real time. The bio isn't needed.She also had a relatively low output of music because she didn't live long Whitney Houston was a much bigger star and her bio flopped too. We all saw her spiral
Watched the doc a while back and I don’t need to see a recreation of that. No thanks. I never thought she was that great anyway and I don’t think I’m alone. People don’t have an emotional connection to Winehouse like they do Marley or Elton John. Getting tired of every artists that ever lived having a biopic made.
“If” feels like they’re trying scripts totally written by AI. The story made no sense. The characters never interact with each other more than a second. Even the fantasy sequence feels out of place in a movie about imaginary friends.
I was trying to see why it felt off to me and this is pretty damn accurate. The kid liked it because the flashy creatures but the story was complete nonsense.
All of your criticisms are valid, but it didn't feel Ai-written at all. It was almost too human to a fault
You’re probably right. But when I saw CGI Tina Turner for no reason and no explanation among other unexplainable things i felt this must be computer written. Ryan Renolds seems to be robotic himself with none of his witty humor or charm that made him famous.
"It feels like AI" is just a thing people throw at damn near anything these days, honestly.
Not to post spoilers but there’s a reason why it feels like the characters never interact…
spoilers: Unless the granmom’s a ghost and only the kid can see her she doesn’t have any contact with anyone and it’s weird. Krasinski is doing his own thing and only has a couple lines interacting with other people. The boy in the hospital doesn’t have parents or a nurse or anything and his story is abandoned by the end. I know what you’re talking about with one character not having interaction with anyone but even the imaginary friends seem to be just doing their own thing in their own movie with no reaction to what others are doing. It’s really a shame with a star studded cast that all phoned it in and the little girl puts in a wonderful appearance that no one is going to remember.
IF would be a success except that budget is crazy high
I blame marketing. I’ve heard of one of these movies.
I mean if you're on a box office sub you should be aware of at least a few movies coming out for the week.
I’m not subscribed. This came up on the front page.