The controversies and mixed reviews couldn’t kill a movie that audiences still wanted to see.<\/b>
\nDF-10193 \u2013 L-R: Ben Hardy (Roger Taylor), Gwilym Lee (Brian May), Joe Mazzello (John Deacon), and Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury) star in Twentieth Century Fox\u2019s BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. Photo Credit: Alex Bailey
Mixed- negative reviews (mostly) didn\u2019t matter. Controversies over historical accuracy and whether or not the film had nice things to say (or enough to say) about Freddie Mercury\u2019s life as a bisexual man who died of AIDS didn\u2019t matter. Bryan Singer getting fired and replaced by Dexter Fletcher didn\u2019t matter. The threat of more allegations against Singer concerning inappropriate and\/or illegal sexual behavior didn\u2019t matter. Nothing really mattered because folks wanted a big-budget, splashy, musically-focused Freddie Mercury biopic and Bohemian Rhapsody delivered just that. All the bad buzz in the world can\u2019t kill a movie that people actually want to see.
Audiences thought the trailers (which played great on a big screen) were appropriately spectacular. Even most of the bad reviews noted that the film had a strong lead performance and terrific musical sequences. Fans and general moviegoers were, for better or worse, less concerned about the film\u2019s value as an LGBTQIA-friendly historical document (or an explicitly well-made movie). Fox and Regency’s $52 million-budgeted Bohemian Rhapsody opened with $50m domestic and $141m worldwide this weekend, including $10.2m worldwide from IMAX alone. That\u2019s a monstrous sum for this kind of movie in this Netflix-and-Chill era. Even counting inflation, it\u2019s the second-biggest domestic debut for a musical biopic behind the $60m launch of Straight Outta Compton three years ago.
If it plays like that N. W. A. flick, we\u2019re looking at a 2.66x multiplier and a $133 million domestic total. Considering the \u201cnew normal\u201d (where fewer films break out but the ones that do tend to stick around), it could leg out into Christmas That\u2019s especially true as it earned an A from Cinemascore and a 4.5\/5 from PostTrak and will exist the adult movie of choice alongside fellow musical juggernaut A Star Is Born (which opened with \u201conly\u201d $43m last month). As I\u2019ve said so many times, and as we\u2019re going to find out yet again next month with Walt Disney\u2019s Mary Poppins Returns, live-action musicals are a big deal.
Bohemian Rhapsody may not be as leggy as Ray ($75 million from a $20m debut), but I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll flat line like All Eyez on Me ($45m from a $26m debut). This is yet another case where the reviews mattered, namely that even the bad reviews noted that the film still provided that which general audiences wanted out of a given movie. The bad reviews didn\u2019t offer evidence why those who were excited to see the movie shouldn\u2019t bother. You want Rami Malek acting his heart out and a surplus of toe-tapping and IMAX-worthy musical sequences? Step right up! It played 51% female, 78% over 25,62% Caucasian, 20% Hispanic, 8% Asian and 6% African-American.
The behind-the-scenes controversy and online handwringing about whether the trailers were overly straight-washed made as much of an impact here as they did for the various behind-the-scenes melodramas of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Brad Pitt\u2019s World War Z or Angelina Jolie\u2019s Maleficent. This further debunks the notion that (for example) Solo: A Star Wars Story \u2019s underperformance had anything to do with director replacement. Folks may be aware of this stuff. But if they want to see a movie and they think it looks good, they are still going to show up and\/or won\u2019t penalize themselves to maintain a theoretical high moral ground.
Bohemian Rhapsody represents a bittersweet victory for Fox. The hope is that Disney bought Fox specifically for this kind of \u201cbig movies for grown-ups\u201d movie and not just to throw the X-Men into the MCU. Speaking of which, this $55 million-budgeted film ended up on this date after Simon Kinberg\u2019s Dark Phoenix fled to 2019. In its place is Bryan Singer\u2019s rock biopic, which is opening about as well as a stereotypical \u201cno Wolverine\u201d X-Men movie. It is yet more proof that anything can be an event movie if it\u2019s something that one demographic or another really wants to see.
Whether or not the movie is a success as an LGBTQIA-friendly studio release (my biggest problem with it is that it slut-shames its hero and argues that straying from his heteronormative life caused his downfall), it\u2019s still slightly groundbreaking in that it\u2019s a blockbuster musical biopic centered around a bisexual musician. If it gets even to $125 million, it will be (sans inflation) the biggest-grossing \u201cLGBTQIA\u201d movie of all time. We\u2019ll see if Rocket Man follows suit and\/or to what extent Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald qualifies when the time comes. For the moment, Bohemian Rhapsody is the champion.
I’ve studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing s…
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