Billy Eichner recently caused a minor controversy on Twitter when he blamed straight people for the box office underperformance of his new LGBTQ-themed romcom Bros. Eichner, the star and co-writer of the film, tweeted, “Straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros.” While it may be true that some homophobic moviegoers avoided this film on the basis of its subject matter, there are many other factors that contributed to Bros’ commercial failure.
The trailers for Bros were too busy pointing out its historic status as the first studio romcom about a same-sex couple to show how funny the movie is. It was released at the end of September, just before the spooky season typically reserved for horror films like Smile, Hellraiser, and Halloween Ends. Ticket to Paradise, another romantic comedy released in the same window, is bolstered by the star power of George Clooney and Julia Roberts. Bros, on the other hand, doesn’t have any famous faces in its cast. Eichner is the biggest star in the movie, and he’s a C-lister at best. And on top of all that, it’s simply been a really long time since a large audience came out to theaters to see a comedy of any kind.
Less than a decade ago, a lackluster star-driven comedy like Identity Thief or Let’s Be Cops or The Wedding Ringer could easily succeed at the box office. But that was before moviegoing audiences began seeking humor in blockbusters like Deadpool, Thor: Ragnarok, and Guardians of the Galaxy, and before the film industry was ravaged by a global pandemic. Almost every major comedy film release of the 2020s has disappointed at the box office, from star-studded comedies (Like a Boss) to family comedies (My Spy) to comedy-dramas (Downhill) to action comedies (The King’s Man) to sci-fi comedies (Bill & Ted Face the Music) to animated comedies (The Bob’s Burgers Movie). Comedies about straight couples have been bombing just as hard as the one about a gay couple.
These days, most comedy movies are relegated to streaming, even comedies that would’ve seemed like surefire box office hits a few years ago. The sequels to both Borat and Eddie Murphy’s modern fairy tale Coming to America, which each struck box office gold in their initial theatrical run, were released exclusively on Prime Video. The problem with straight-to-streaming comedies is that there’s far less pressure to win over audiences, so the filmmakers get lazy. Since they don’t need to get butts in seats, they don’t bother using test audiences to make sure the movie gets laughs and fine-tune the jokes. As a result, viewers are being subjected to abysmal efforts like Me Time and Senior Year that only inspire a couple of half-hearted chuckles if they get any audience response at all.
Mid-budget studio movies have been in decline ever since streaming killed the home media market. Back in the day, studios could recoup their losses from a movie like Bros when it was released on DVD. But the only people who still buy DVDs are old-fashioned cinephiles and diehard collectors. The pandemic seems to have hammered the final nail into the mid-budget studio movie’s coffin. The big studios are pumping nine-figure budgets into guaranteed moneymaking I.P.s like Star Wars and Fast & Furious, while smaller studios like A24 and Blumhouse can afford to take risks with seven-figure movies like X, Get Out, and It Comes at Night that become sleeper hits if they catch on but won’t break the bank if they fail.
Studios won’t throw $20 million at a movie like Superbad or $35 million at a movie like The Hangover anymore, because it’s highly unlikely that they’ll make that money back in the modern cinematic climate. In today’s post-streaming, post-pandemic movie market, there was no need to spend $22 million on Bros. The cast doesn’t have any A-listers beyond its brief celebrity cameos, the soundtrack doesn’t feature any artists with particularly expensive licensing fees, and there are no big set-pieces like the final battle in Ghostbusters or the car chase in Pineapple Express. If Bros had been produced for $5 million and marketed exactly the same way, then this conversation wouldn’t even be happening; the movie would’ve made back its production costs in its opening weekend.
The most successful recent comedies, like Booksmart and Sorry to Bother You, have been produced on tiny budgets, enjoyed modest theatrical runs where they turned a profit without setting the world on fire, and then been gradually discovered by wider audiences in the months that followed. Sadly, this might be the best that film comedy can hope for going forward. Audiences might never get to see a big, bold, star-studded studio comedy like Tropic Thunder or 21 Jump Street on the big screen ever again. They’ll have to seek their laughs in big-budget superhero movies like Thor: Love and Thunder and low-budget hidden gems like Funny Pages, with nothing in between.
It would be a real tragedy if the comedy genre is truly dead, because comedies demand to be seen in theaters. It’s not necessarily that they need to be seen on a big screen, because they’re not as visually engaging or spectacle-oriented as action films or sci-fi films or soulful arthouse dramas. But comedies are more enjoyable with a crowd. When a comedy really works, like Borat or Bridesmaids or Beverly Hills Cop – or, indeed, Bros – then they’re much more fun to watch in a packed house, laughing along with the rest of the audience, than watching it alone on a TV or laptop screen.