Lionsgate Bans "Critical Social Sentiment" For 'Ballerina' Until June 4th, But Encourages "Enthusiasm" Beginning On May 22nd
Lionsgate, the distributor for the John Wick spinoff film Ballerina, has banned “critical social sentiment” for the film until June 9th while encouraging “enthusiasm” for the film on May 22nd.
Film and TV critic Charles Bramesco, who writes at The Guardian and Vulture, shared a note from Lionsgate to X that states, “We encourage spoiler-free enthusiasm across social starting May 22 @ 1PM PT/4PM ET/ 9PM BST.”
It continued, “If you are planning to review the film, critical social sentiment & formal reviews are embargoed until Wednesday, June 4 at 3 PM PT/ 6PM ET / 11PM BST.”
Bramesco shared his own thoughts writing, “I gotta hand it to BALLERINA distributors Lionsgate, most studios don't have the stones to come right out and say, ‘you're allowed to tweet about it, but only if it's positive’ — commendable honesty!”
Pop Culture Crisis host Brett Dasovic reacted to these instructions from Lionsgate indicating that it breaks the trust moviegoers have not only with the studio, but the reviewers as well.
He said, “When you start putting out emails like this, people already don’t trust these studios and you’re setting yourself up for failure. And they’re at a disadvantage anyways because people are automatically distrustful of the ‘girlboss’ action movie these days. … So they’re setting themselves up for failure with the audience’s future trust by putting out emails like this.”
This trust has been eroded significantly over the last decade or so with critic reviews, in many cases, being wildly different from audience scores.
On top of that critics have admitted they sell themselves and their audiences out in order to stay in good favor with studios. SyFy Wire’s Dany Roth admitted to making positive reviews for films and in order to maintain access with companies like Disney. He stated on SyFy Wire’s podcast “Who Won The Week, “Here’s the actual reality. Here’s where we actually are in the industry if you want to talk about quote access media. Every single person that wants to have access to things early, that wants to get access to things so that traffic is drawn to their site will on occasion. Everybody at this podcast, everybody in our industry occasionally has to play softball, occasionally has to look the other way a little bit. Everybody has to do it. In the sense that I hated a movie, but I won’t say that I hated a movie. Or an actor behaved a sort of way, and you don’t want to put it out there that that happened.”
Co-host Karama Horne then chimed in, “Right, because you might not get the next review.”
Roth continued, “To some degree everybody in our industry that is part of this quote on quote access media has to decide which battles they want to pick. Which of the ones where my voice is the one that has to get said.”
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Ironically, emails like this are an attempt to attract as many people to the box office as possible in order to not only cover the costs for the film, but to hopefully make a profit. However, it’s likely that since the email has now been made public, it will have the opposite effect.
Back at the end of April, the long-range projections for Ballerina from Shawn Robbins at Box Office Theory predicted the film would have an opening weekend domestic gross between $39 million and $48 million. His pinpoint projection was $45 million.
He noted the film would gross between $94 million and $132 million with a pinpoint projection of $113 million for the film’s entire domestic box office run.
Those projections have declined. He most recently predicted it would only have an opening weekend between $33 million and $39 million with a pinpoint projection of $36 million.
As for the film’s domestic run, it also declined to a range between $79 million and $107 million with a pinpoint of $91 million.
The film reportedly has a budget between $80 to $90 million, which means it needs to gross at least $240 million to break even. If the movie has a similar domestic to international ratio as John Wick: Chapter 4 it needs to gross at least $100 million domestically to break even.
What do you make of Lionsgate banning critical social sentiment for Ballerina until a day before the film releases?
LMAO
I'm just surprised it wasn't the ubiquitous black lesbian girl-boss like bug-eyed Debra Wilson.
Nothing says “we have a good movie” like telling reviewers that they can’t say anything bad about it till weeks after they can say something good about it.