Since its premiere at Sundance, Bill Condon’s Kiss of the Spider Woman has been set up as an awards contender for 2025. Starring Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, and Tonatiuh, it’s a new adaptation of the musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, which is itself an adaptation of Manuel Puig’s novel of the same name.
Now, the film has a trailer, heavy on Jennifer Lopez and prison, and yeah, I can see this campaign shaping up now. Jennifer Lopez: Super Earnest Star, in the role she was born to play, in “the best movie musical in years”. (Are you TRYING to start a stan war with Wicked fans?)
It looks very lavish, I’ll give it that. But I am curious if JLo will have better luck with the Academy in a film that looks so earnest about honoring movie musical history—Condon cited Bob Fosse as an inspiration for his adaptation of Spider Woman—and in a role that emphasizes her singing and dancing, not just acting.
As we know, despite giving a truly great performance, Hustlers got her nowhere vis a vis the Oscars, but that was a sexy movie about sex and power and women using sex against men to gain economic power. Maybe an old-fashioned movie musical about the power of cinematic fantasy will play better with that crowd. Or maybe Jennifer Lopez is unpopular with her acting peers because of all the wild sh-t she talked on them that one time in 1998. These people hold grudges!
What else happened today…
What WAS the dress code for The Wrap’s “Women in Comedy” event? Everyone seemed to have a different idea. (Go Fug Yourself)
Alexandra Grant showed up with Keanu Reeves at the Los Angeles premiere of Ballerina. They’re so tall. Also, she’s apparently wearing a diamond ring on her ring finger. I thought we already knew they’re engaged? Did I Mandela Effect that into reality? (Celebitchy)
Amazon MGM dropped The Accountant 2 onto Prime Video 41 days after it opened in theaters. Longer exclusive theatrical windows are better—for retraining people to go see movies in theaters, if nothing else—but the imperfections of Amazon MGM’s approach to movie theaters shows how hostile Netflix’s own strategy really is. In the case of The Accountant 2, you can also argue this is a distributor moving a film to streaming once the theatrical box office has petered out. The Accountant 2 made over $100 million worldwide, but by week 9 (May 23-29) it was on its last legs. Amazon is losing maybe $3-5 million box office by moving it to streaming. To them, that is negligible. I am all for longer theatrical exclusivity, but distributors should have the flexibility to shuffle things around once a film is done earning.
The really stupid move is Warner Bros. moving Sinners to digital this week even though it’s still performing theatrically. That’s a case where they should be extending its run, but I maintain those execs are mad Ryan Coogler got a favorable deal and they’re being diaper babies about it. (Pajiba)
Few places get stereotyped worse than Appalachia, a place JD Vance claims is full of lazy do-nothings who would rather suckle at the government’s teat than pull themselves up by the bootstraps (like he did by way of a military scholarship, aka the government teat). But Jeffrey Webb argues the film Dark Waters shows communities drained dry—and often left unhealthy—by out of state corporations, who then do their damnedest to fight back however they can.
Dark Waters kind of flew under the radar back in 2019, but in the years since, it has gained a deserved reputation as one of the great legal procedurals documenting how hard it is to fight corporations, and how crucial communities are to the effort to claw back any kind of responsibility from those corporations after they’ve left communities environmentally and economically depressed. It’s like Erin Brockovich without the rah-rah feminism. (Bright Wall/Dark Room)
Here is JLo out yesterday in LA.
