Fin: I don’t care how much money ‘One Battle After Another’ makes or loses, nor should you

Also, remembering Val Kilmer, The Beatles movies, 'The Naked Gun,' Fincher/Tarantino, and more in this week’s notes column.

Leonardo DiCaprio at CinemaCon (Warner Brothers)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, One Battle After Another, is set for release in September, and the rollout of buzz has begun. The first trailer is out, and I saw a commercial for it during Saturday Night Live last week, which is a pretty rare thing for a film whose release remains five months away. There were rumblings about local test screenings last week.

From what we’ve seen so far, the film looks good. It’s said to be a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland; the last time PTA adapted a Pynchon novel was Inherent Vice, one of my favorite movies of all time. The plot synopsis sounds intriguing — “When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunites to rescue one of their own's daughter,” and the trailer is promising:

Leonardo DiCaprio is the star, and he never half-asses it, especially if he’s working for a major director. The supporting cast features the likes of Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Alana Haim, who for some reason hasn’t been in a film since she starred in PTA’s great Licorice Pizza. It’s going to be released in IMAX, an Anderson first.

For people who care about film, One Battle After Another is among the most anticipated pictures of the fall.

But I’ve been reading weird things about the last couple of weeks. Like this Variety piece, looking at the film’s long odds of Warner Bros. Discovery making back its reported $130 million budget, as well as some skeptical-sounding reports from test screenings. Even more strangely, a lot of people on social media have been sharing this report, gleefully, for some reason:

I get that a lot of people hate David Zaslav, the current boss of that company. He’s done a lot of indefensible stuff in his time at the helm, from burying movies to ruining what used to be special about HBO.

But I don’t know, I think greenlighting a super-expensive, esoteric auteur project from a major filmmaker is one of the good things Zaslav has done, and that I would like for him to continue to do. (The Variety story is that the heads of the Warner studio, who have seen a lot of auteurist movies like Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 flop lately, could be headed out the door soon if that happens, so it wouldn’t be Zaslav who gets fired anyway.)

I can’t stress this enough: Unless you’re an employee, shareholder or marketing consultant of Warner Bros. Discovery, or someone otherwise invested in the company or this particular film, there is no reason in the world for you to care about the budget math and break-even potential of a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, five months before it is released.

If you do care, it’s deeply, deeply weird behavior, and an indication that you’re not interested in movies for the right reasons, if at all. It’s not your money. You don’t lose your investment if the movie underperforms at the box office.

I can understand if you love a movie and it flops, and you feel like it’s a bummer because you wish more people had experienced the movie you liked, and that it could mean the filmmaker you appreciate might not have the clout to make more movies in the future. But worrying about such things, months before the movie comes out?

That’s ridiculous. Don’t do that. If you’re rooting for a movie like this to flop, so studios stick to easier and safer fare, then you’re a philistine, in addition to being an idiot. Don’t be this guy:

Unless you work in the business, you shouldn’t even know who “Tsujihara” is, much less have an opinion about him.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s great new Apple show The Studio is based on the notion that Rogen’s character is a studio exec who truly loves movies and wants to make great ones, but is pushed by market and corporate pressures to keep doing everything but. “I got into this because I love movies and now my job is to ruin them,” Rogen says during the show, echoing something an executive once told him, early in his career.

The Variety story includes this paragraph, referencing that:

In Seth Rogen’s “The Studio,” the new Apple TV+ series, a studio chief with highbrow taste is left grappling with how he can make art for the masses as his corporate overlord (Bryan Cranston) hovers over his shoulder. It’s a problem that seems to be playing out at Warner Bros. — especially on expensive auteur projects like those from Anderson and Gyllenhaal.

Farewell, My Huckleberry

Val Kilmer passed away this week at age 65. He’s one of those actors where he passes away, you look over his filmography, and realize, “damn, that guy was in a lot of great movies.”