How Will ‘The Fall Guy’ Fare at the Box Office? Word of Mouth Will Tell
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On this week’s “Screen Talk,” co-hosts Ryan Lattanzio and Anne Thompson review new releases “The Fall Guy” (Universal), “Wildcat” (Oscilloscope), and “I Saw the TV Glow” (A24). While they both enjoyed David Leitch’s latest stunt-fest, starring Ryan Gosling as a movie stuntman and Emily Blunt as his director and ex-girlfriend, Thompson said the movie set in Sydney was well-mounted but a tad shallow and cartoony, while Lattanzio said it was not a challenging movie in any way, and that a series of showdowns and battles pile on at the end. Box office projections are all over the map, from $25-50 million. Upbeat word of mouth should carry the day.
Despite lukewarm Sundance reactions to Ethan Hawke’s “Wildcat” — which the actor-director-writer (“Blaze”) crafted specifically for his daughter, actress Maya Hawke, who plays Southern writer Flannery O’Connor — both Lattanzio and Thompson admired the movie, which blurs reality and fiction and understands the torment and toil of being an artist. As a director, Hawke sometimes errs on the side of edgy ugliness at the expense of accessibility.
Lattanzio raved about a better-reviewed Sundance debut, Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” a younger audience picture in limited release about our relationship with media consumption.
The hot topic at the recent, pared down San Francisco International Film Festival, where Thompson was on the global jury, was the city’s bid for Sundance to come to San Francisco. It’s unlikely to happen in 2027, the first year Sundance could turn up at another location, because the festival does not want to land on someone else’s turf.
On the TV front, Thompson recommends David E. Kelley’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s sprawling 1998 novel “A Man in Full,” starring Jeff Daniels at full throttle. Regina King and Tom Schlamme direct. Lattanzio likes Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer.”
Tune in next week for our Cannes preview.
Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous episodes here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk
