Glen bounces back with Brisket

Glen Powell had a sh-tty weekend at the box office as The Running Man opened way below expectations but he had a great weekend on television and followed all of that up with another appearance in the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue, his second in a row, so it’s not all glum, and if you’re going to flop at the box office, killing it on SNL is a great way to balance it out. 

Glen is savvy enough to keep his SNL win top of mind with his most recent post on Instagram. 

Scott Mendelson had an interesting take on Glen and the earnings disappointment of The Running Man in a piece for Puck the other day. One of the points he makes is that Glen, like so many other male stars, first found an audience as a romantic leading man. Not just in Anyone But You but before that too, in Set It Up. And Hit Man worked well too. But like his predecessors, the prescribed Hollywood route was to go straight to the action star game plan, and The Running Man wasn’t the right IP which has resulted in this recent stumble. 

Scott didn’t elaborate too much on this but the audience for romcoms are women and they’re the ones who showed up for Glen’s most successful projects. They’re also, by the way, the audience that showed up for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, which beat The Running Man at the box office this weekend – because WOMEN chose it over The Running Man. Women will also be taking Wicked: For Good all the way to the top tomorrow when it opens. Is that ironic? Hollywood is like the rest of our culture in how it consistently undervalues female viewership. 

Back to Glen though, like I said, it’s not all bad. His performance as a first-time host on Saturday Night Live has been widely praised, not just by casual viewers but longtime SNL nerds. His episode now ranks as one of the best first-timers ever which naturally sets him up to be an eventual five-timer (if Donald Trump doesn’t torpedo it within a year), that’s how popular he was with the audience, but more importantly, with the cast. 

Here are Glen and Brisket in Miami yesterday. Seriously, he’s looking more and more like Tom Cruise.