George Clooney’s latest film, Wolfs, will premiere in a few weeks during the Venice Film Festival. George is already in Italy with Amal and her mother, Baria Alamuddin (the photos are no longer available to us, but you can see them here). Presumably, he’ll be staying in Italy until the film fest. I hope Amal goes with him to the premiere. I generally always like her style, but she really pulls out the stops in Italy.
Speaking of Wolfs, though, there is an update regarding the film. Reuniting Clooney with Brad Pitt, the crime caper was supposed to have a full theatrical run following its Venice premiere. Now, however, it will only play in limited theaters for one week beginning on September 20 before debuting on Apple TV+ on September 27. I previously mentioned that Apple was one of the rare streamers with any kind of commitment to theatrical releases, but they had a bad box office run in 2023 and early 2024. Now, it appears they’re taking a page out of Netflix’s book with the brief, limited theatrical rollout before moving to streaming.
And lest we assume this change is a statement on the film’s quality, Apple has already commissioned writer/director Jon Watts to make a sequel. Obviously, they like something about this movie, at least enough to make another one. But not enough to go for a wide theatrical release. It could be that they want to beef up their streaming business—Apple TV+ isn’t widely used, especially with no more Ted Lasso—but it could also be that theaters have become a tough place for adult-oriented films to thrive. I said before that “[o]nce upon a time, Wolfs would be a $100 million no brainer, but now? I guess we’ll find out in September.” Well, this is us finding out, and we didn’t even have to wait till September. Apple doesn’t expect it to make real money. Not even two of the last A-list Movie Stars are enough to get a movie a wide theatrical release these days.
