The Springsteen Flick

We had to endure eighteen months of hype for this?

My favorite review was in the "Wall Street Journal":

 "It's like a Mariah Carey movie about a Bruce Springsteen album."

On Metacritic it gets a whopping 60.

On RottenTomatoes it did better, it got a 61!

"Bohemian Rhapsody" was a fluke. That's what's great about filmed entertainment, as William Goldman once said, "Nobody knows anything." and as a result we're regularly surprised. Superhero movies don't meet expectations, and then there are left field pictures that succeed, like the Queen biopic, which grossed $910.8 million on a budget just north of $50 million. A movie that featured a guy who's been dead for decades with a group whose hits are in the far distant past? A niche effort on the surface, but it resonated with the public. People feel warm about Queen. No other band has come up with a song as outré as "Bohemian Rhapsody," and Freddie Mercury was the consummate frontman/showman. But still, nearly a billion bucks?

So in a business where if it worked once, it must work again, we've had a number of musical biopics since. The Elton John movie "Rocketman" was no "Bohemian Rhapsody, it grossed $195.3 million on a budget of about $40 million... So when it was all said and done, with ancillary rights included, "Rocketman" made a profit. But also, it was released at the same time as Elton was on his final tour... There was a tie-in, built-in promotion, the world was excited about Elton. But Bruce Springsteen and "Nebraska'? An entire movie about an album Paul Rappaport had to beg rock radio to play? A record that stands outside Bruce's oeuvre? Sure, fans know it, but the general public doesn't know the songs... Which are dark, anything but upbeat like with Queen and Elton. Who thought this was a good idea?

The Bob Dylan movie "A Complete Unknown," grossed $140.5 million on a budget somewhere between $50 and $70 million. But the Dylan movie had a hook, a story, an arc, the run-up to Newport. Furthermore, the film got good reviews!

And Springsteen is still alive, recording and touring... How is anybody going to portray him believably? As for Dylan...he's such an enigma, no one knows who he really is other than himself. And Springsteen was all over MTV, unlike Dylan, we know Springsteen, why do we need this movie?

Starring the guy from "The Bear"?

Jeremy Allen White is good in that show, but the only people who believed he could carry this Springsteen film are those involved in making it.

And it will be forgotten soon, after it leaves theatres after lousy grosses, it's not going to hurt the Boss, BUT WHY DID WE NEED THIS?

But even worse is the hype. We had to endure all the stories, they went on ad infinitum, you'd think it was Elvis come back from the dead.

Meanwhile, "KPop Demon Hunters" launches on Netflix and becomes a phenomenon.

Ted Sarandos just said:

"'We believe that "KPop Demon Hunters" worked because it was first released on Netflix,' Sarandos said. 'We had something that people fell in love with … but not in a huge way on the first day or even the first weekend.'"

This is why Netflix is eating the studios' lunch. You make a lot of product, you don't know what will be successful, and you don't bother to hype it in advance and it sinks or swims on the service. And if it starts to catch fire, the barrier to entry is incredibly low, there are nearly a hundred million U.S. homes with Netflix subscriptions, so if you hear about something, you can just fire the app right up and check it out, AT NO ADDITIONAL COST!

Who is going to pay $20 to go see "Deliver Me from Nowhere" in the theatre... Hard core Boss fans, and that's it.

The public is not stupid, they check the buzz before they lay down their money, they don't want to get ripped-off, in time or cash. By the day of launch you know if a film is alive or a turkey...

Meanwhile, a turkey can succeed on Netflix. I mean if you're not paying, why not check out a Springsteen biopic? Think of all the mediocre stuff you've sat through on the flat screen!

But by time the Springsteen film hits streaming... You can't raise buzz twice. You get one shot. And now this film is dead in the water.

Spend less and make more. Why waste all this cash on such a risky project? It's the Emperor's New Clothes, it's a circle jerk.

Even the music business has flipped. Now albums releases are often surprises, the hype doesn't begin until the record hits Spotify, or close thereto. Meanwhile, today's acts make much more music than the acts of the seventies and eighties, they can put out three albums a year! And they know a hit is nice, but they're playing to their hard core fan base, who are keeping them alive. For all the hype about the new Swift album, did you listen to it? You don't have to for her to make bank! She's got fans laying down cash for over thirty vinyl variants!

We can discuss the brewing backlash, but that's not my point, my point is today EVERYTHING is niche, and don't waste our time promoting broadly that which is not. It's not the pre-internet era, with squibs in "Time" magazine ahead of release date, never mind Thursday night commercials on network television, which the target audience no longer watches, may not even have access to!

But the film business keeps doing it the same way, only they're making fewer movies and hoping for moonshots.

They don't want singles and doubles, the opportunity cost is too high. This is what is killing the major labels... If it doesn't have a chance of going nuclear, of the act becoming a superstar, they don't even sign you. Meanwhile, indie market share keeps growing... Then again, the majors are buying up all the indie distributors...which is why there's a kerfuffle over the Downtown acquisition.

You've got to adjust. And you must realize you can burn the audience out by banging their heads with hype over and over again for a mediocre product that does not deserve it.

Once again, in the information age, we know INSTANTLY whether something is good or bad...that's a feature, not a bug...even though the movie industry hates it, because they can no longer pull the wool over our eyes with bad product.

So stop making musical biopics. Unless they're cheap.

And they're items that should go straight to streaming anyway.

As for those involved...

They won't admit this project was flawed in conception and not great in result, they'll blame the failure on the audience, or the exhibitors, anybody but themselves.

Whoever greenlit this picture should be fired.

We can question whether there is even a future for theatrical distribution, but one thing is for sure, it won't be propped up by junk like this. Hell, Netflix put "KPop Demon Hunters" on streaming and THEN took it to theatres!

This is baby boomer thinking. The same people who insist we must go to the theatre to see a flick. The same people who said the MP3 didn't sound good enough...it did for the majority of the public, which is rejecting higher resolution music, seeing it as unnecessary, not buying the DACs to hear it, and a film on the giant television sets of today...is oftentimes a much better experience than the theatre... Forget that it's not overpriced, no one is texting or talking, the floors are not sticky, the popcorn is not expensive and you can pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Case closed!

Steve Jobs was famous for excising past technology and forcing the public into the new. He went all USB when Windows machines were cluttered with legacy ports...

You've got to live in the present, you've got to adjust for changed conditions, you must pivot, or be forgotten... Just like all the acts who used to get paid by the labels to make music... The big budget days are never coming back, but oldsters keep complaining that the new paradigm is not fair, while they refuse to post on social media and monetize in new ways.

Once again, we had to wait this long to find out this picture is substandard?

I want to make someone pay. The somnambulant entertainment press, which repeats what the studios say, rubber stamping these films just like Congress goes along with Trump.

There is always a day of reckoning. And for the Springsteen flick, it came today.

It's NOWHERE!


--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25

To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25