The discourse around Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” has been rampant, and prior to the critics’ reviews, was dominated by accusations of whitewashing in response to the casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. Social media exploded with text-truthers insisting that a person of color should have been cast instead. But this response, while textually informed, is critically shallow, bordering on covertly racist.

The director of “Wuthering Heights” has been vocal about her choices. She isn’t claiming allegiance to the verbatim text, and she acknowledges that film renders novels to a two-dimensional format. The trailer even describes it as “inspired by the greatest love story” rather than “based on.” In her Fandango interview, she explained the quotation marks around the title:

“The thing for me is you can’t adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book. I can’t say I’m making Wuthering Heights. It’s not possible. What I can say is I’m making a version of it.

There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is ‘Wuthering Heights’, and it isn’t.”

Subscribe now

The “whitewashing” critique comes primarily from white English majors who haven’t grappled with what representation as a gothic villain actually means, particularly in the film medium. The text of Wuthering Heights is rife with racist commentary about Heathcliff, yet it offers remarkably vague physical descriptions and background clues.

He is said to be “dark,” “black-haired,” and “gipsy in aspect,” found starving in Liverpool, possibly arriving from the Lascar colonies (suggesting South Asian descent) or possibly even of Romani heritage. But this is deliberately ambiguous and open for interpretation. Brontë gives no actual cultural context: no language, no traditions, no community. “Gipsy” functions purely as a slur and shorthand for dubiousness and permanent outsider status. In stark contrast to these infrequent physical descriptions, the novel is saturated with racialized language and dehumanization. He is repeatedly called “it,” “dog,” or “dirty,” and constantly likened to brutes, savages, animals or beasts.

@elirallo @elirallo ♬ original sound - Eli Rallo

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

On screen, any specific racial identity risks reproducing harmful stereotypes about violent, criminal brown men – stereotypes that have endured since the Victorian times to today. Without any cultural grounding, this “representation” would more likely read as tokenization. And I’ll save you the rant about the sexualization of Black people in media dating back centuries, as that conversation is taking place surrounding Teyana Taylor’s character in One Battle After Another. By removing the racial question entirely, Fennell can focus on what the novel actually explores: class, ambition and the violence of social hierarchy (and codependency, the lasting effects of childhood trauma, etc., etc.).

Fennell knows the text. She knows the racial coding. She’s worked with the Brontë Parsonage Museum to produce this film. The title’s quotation marks suggest she’s made conscious choices to deviate, in my opinion, correctly navigating the challenge of adapting this “complex” text in 2026.

And sure, Fennell’s adaptation was somewhat kind to Heathcliff, but his real deviousness amps up in the second half of the novel, which almost no filmmaker has dared to touch. Thus, had she cast a man of color and centered his racial identity as the text suggests, at best, you would even further humanize a character Brontë wrote as fundamentally irredeemable, and at worst, you would suggest his race is intrinsic to his irredeemability.

Sometimes the ~progressive~ thing to do is recognizing that a text is too embedded in racist stereotypes to adapt “faithfully.” Sometimes representation means saying, “Actually, we don’t need another story about a violent, criminal, irredeemable brown man, even if the source material suggests he is not white.” And this is not a takedown of my girl Emily Brontë!!!! The woman had connections to the abolitionist movement. Creating a possibly Black/South Asian/Romani protagonist who successfully climbs the social ladder, owns property, and successfully exacts revenge was edgy, even potentially revolutionary for 1847.

But what does it mean to regurgitate that narrative in 2026? We know more now about how stereotypes function. We understand the harm of representing non-white people primarily as violent, scheming villains: the hypersexual threat to white women, the vengeful outsider sabotaging civilized society, the irredeemable criminal climbing the social ladder only to destroy it. So, resist the urge to jump straight to “Why didn’t they cast a POC?” and stop to consider “What kinds of stories do we want to tell about this marginalized group of people, and is this one of them?” I know it’s hard to fathom at times, but this world has made some progress over the last 150 years. Time gives us perspective, even, or maybe especially, on our most beloved texts.

Two years out from the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, you’d think the television landscape would feel fresher, stranger, riskier. Sure, television is still doing more ambitious work than film (which remains locked in IP wars and superhero purgatory), but the creative energy feels oddly redundant. Every prestige drama or buzzy limited series is essentially a remix of one of two templates:

• Rich People Are Miserable: The White Lotus, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Gilded Age, The Hunting Wives (slated for later, but spiritually in the mix)

• Capitalism Is Killing Us: Severance, The Studio, and countless riffs on corporate dystopia

Outside of the endless video game adaptations and superhero IP, you can practically see the pitch decks: Succession, but with a sci-fi twist. The Office, but set in the entertainment industry. Even the titles have lost their flavor, everything reduced to some variation of “The ____.” The whole cycle feels like déjà vu, the way the post-Twilight era flooded us with vampires and werewolves. We get it!

This sameness bleeds over to the Emmys themselves. The nomination tallies are similarly repetitive: Severance (27), The Penguin (24), The Studio (23). These are powerhouse series, sure, but when the same handful of shows rack up 20-plus nominations, the awards themselves become a snooze fest. There’s no suspense, no chaos, no surprise, just a stuffy ceremony in a packed theater.

Even the choice in host is uninspired: Nate Bargatze is a perfectly pleasant comedian, but his style of clean comedy with his flat affect is anything but remarkable. You don’t tune into award shows for “pleasant,” you tune in for spectacle, for candid moments of disappointment, unhinged speeches and the occasional knee-slapper. This year doesn’t feel poised to deliver on any of those key moments.

Maybe that’s the real irony: television is still obsessed with criticizing wealth, work, and capitalism, but the award shows celebrating this art can’t stop replicating the very structures they claim to mock — bloated, repetitive, risk-averse.

This year may be a first in my household: prioritizing Sunday Night Football over a main award show.

Share

Key Nominees

Outstanding Drama Series

• Severance

• The White Lotus*

• The Last of Us

• Andor

• The Diplomat

Outstanding Comedy Series

• The Studio

• Abbott Elementary

• The Bear

• Only Murders in the Building

• Shrinking

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

• Noah Wyle (The Pitt)

• Adam Scott (Severance)

• Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us)

• Sterling K. Brown (Paradise)

• Gary Oldman (Slow Horses)

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

• Kathy Bates (Matlock)

• Britt Lower (Severance)

• Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us)

• Keri Russell (The Diplomat)

• Sharon Horgan (Bad Sisters)

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

• Adolescence*

• The Penguin

• Black Mirror

• Dying for Sex

• Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

*who I’m rooting for

Celine Song’s The Materialists sparked a wave of discourse about whether the film amounts to “broke man propaganda.” We’ve all been there: dating a guy who has every opportunity to build a solid foundation for himself but instead chases a passion project or shaky business venture, keeping himself in a perpetual state of instability. And when reality hits, instead of grappling with the very system built by his forefathers (read: other white men), he turns the blame on you—his girlfriend—because you dared to want to go to dinner to celebrate your anniversary. (Note: this is a real scene in the movie. I’m not making this scenario up.)

Despite what felt like a clear consensus among women from all walks of life, outlets like Dazed and The Hollywood Reporter keep reframing criticism of broke men in relationships as “classist” or even “dehumanizing.” But let’s be clear: rejecting entitled men who choose instability isn’t classist—it’s self-preservation. It’s women protecting themselves from disproportionate labor, financial strain, safety risks and emotional exhaustion.

Naturally, I’ve been in the comments. And the replies are astounding. Someone’s son referred to me as “subhuman” and I got quite a few "you’re worse than MAGAs.” Triggered!

What “Classism” Actually Means

Time for a vocab lesson: Classism is the systemic oppression of people with limited socioeconomic access. The keyword here is “access.” This does not apply to lifestyle choices like chasing an acting career while working part-time as a caterer in one of the most expensive cities in the world, like Chris Evans’ character in the film.

Of course, capitalism is an oppressive system that exploits everyone at some level. But it disproportionately benefits white men, because capitalism and white supremacy are historically intertwined. From apartheid South Africa to the U.S. wealth gap, the pattern is the same: capitalism protects and rewards white men while extracting endless labor from everyone else.

So when white, straight, able-bodied men in the U.S. cry “classism” because women don’t see them as eligible long-term partners, it’s not only a misuse of the word—it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of a system they themselves set up. They are its primary beneficiaries.

How Privilege Really Works

Not to make this about me, but let’s take my household as an example. To build my career in PR, I had to earn a college degree, complete four unpaid internships, and juggle multiple jobs in the early years just to gain experience and credibility. I’ve fought and clawed my way to the middle—too junior to receive bonuses, too senior to collect overtime.

Meanwhile, my husband, who is white, stepped into a career that required neither a degree nor experience. He’s worked at the same company for over a decade, for a man who once worked for his father. Today, he earns more than four times my salary.

My experience is just a microcosm of the broader reality: women grind through degrees, unpaid internships and underpaid jobs in feminized industries, while men can walk into higher-paying roles backed by networks built by other white men. My husband didn’t game the system, but he benefits from it — just as I’m penalized by it. And what makes it even more exhausting is that women are expected to climb that same ladder while also rearing children, managing households and absorbing the invisible labor men are rarely asked to shoulder.

This isn’t about who “works harder” or who “deserves more.” It’s about how systems privilege certain men while demanding endless unpaid labor from women. Which is exactly why it’s infuriating when able-bodied white men flood my comments insisting that not being “gifted” a wife is somehow classist.

Entitlement vs. Partnership

Here’s the hard truth: women are not obligated to subsidize someone else’s dreams. Relationships are partnerships, and they require mutual contribution—financially, emotionally, and domestically.

What absolutely drives me nuts most in this debate is the double standard around preferences. When have you ever seen men get shamed for their choices in partners? From hair color to body shape to race, men’s “standards” are normalized—even celebrated. Yet women saying “no” to instability is framed as cruel.

And let’s be honest: dating men already comes with higher risks—violence, emotional labor, unpaid domestic work. Women are dehumanized structurally and socially, forced to work harder to build careers while maintaining relationships and homes. Asking us to also accept instability is just another layer of harm.

Bigger Picture

The so-called “male loneliness epidemic” is not real—it’s a male entitlement epidemic. And the irony is thick: while women are being nudged back toward traditional gender roles (tradwife aesthetics, homesteading culture, government panic over birth rates) white men are no longer expected to provide.

Rejecting those dynamics isn’t cruelty. It’s women refusing to shoulder an already crushing imbalance.

White men can say whatever they want about me in my Instagram comments, but they need to stop weaponizing the language of oppression to shame women into settling. It’s misogynistic to assume women are just after men’s money, when what we’re asking for is something far more radical: a true partnership where stability, safety and effort are shared.

If you’re as exhausted as I am by the endless parade of sequels, remakes, and franchise reboots clogging up Hollywood’s arteries, you’re in the right place. Today, we’re breaking down the creative stagnation of the film industry and what you — yes, you — can do about it.

Let’s get real: Hollywood’s 2025 slate looks like a graveyard of recycled IP, and it’s not just annoying—it’s a symptom of a much deeper problem. Consider this a call to arms for anyone who cares about the future of art, storytelling, and, frankly, not being bored out of your fucking mind at the movies.

The Franchise Problem: Hollywood’s Creative Bankruptcy

It’s impossible to ignore: the 2025 film calendar reads like a greatest hits playlist on repeat. Freakier Friday, Happy Gilmore 2, the ever-expanding Marvel universe, a new Harry Potter series—the list goes on. There’s a certain comfort in the familiar, sure, but at what cost? Hollywood’s reliance on established IP feels less like nostalgia and more like a creative holding pattern.

The culprit seems to lie in a cocktail of risk aversion, algorithmic logic, and the gravitational pull of brand recognition. Studios, wary of financial missteps, double down on what’s already worked. Streaming platforms, guided by data, serve up what’s most clickable. And brands, eager for synergy, embed themselves deeper into the DNA of these projects. The result? A landscape where originality is increasingly crowded out by the safe and the known.

Share

The Over-Commercialization of Art: When Movies Become Billboards

It’s hard not to notice how movies and TV have become, in many ways, elaborate vehicles for product placement. The days of subtle nods to brands (the OG Jurassic Park’s iconic yellow Jeeps) have given way to a new era where sponsorships are front and center—sometimes even dictating the narrative. Watching a film can feel like being trapped inside a commercial, with storylines bending to accommodate the next big brand integration.

This isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about the shifting priorities of the industry. When corporate partnerships drive creative decisions, the line between art and advertisement blurs. The question becomes: are we watching stories or just elaborate marketing campaigns?

Where Originality Still Finds a Home

Yet, even as mainstream film and TV double down on the familiar, other corners of pop culture are alive with experimentation. Music, for instance, seems to thrive on risk. Artists like Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga regularly reinvent themselves, while others like Olivia Rodrigo channel old genres into something unmistakably fresh. The music world, for all its commercial pressures, still rewards those willing to take creative leaps.

Theater, too, remains an open terrain for new ideas. Broadway’s Oh Mary and other original productions prove that audiences are hungry for stories they haven’t heard before. And indie films like A24’s latest offerings remind us that there’s still an appetite for the unexpected, even if it’s not always reflected in box office numbers.

Art vs. Content: The Blurring Line

All of this points to a deeper cultural shift. The distinction between “art” and “content” has never been murkier. Social media, AI and streaming algorithms have created an environment where projects are greenlit based on their potential for virality and ROI, not their creative merit. The result is a kind of homogenization, a flattening of the cultural landscape, where surprise and risk are increasingly rare commodities.

What’s at stake isn’t just the quality of our entertainment, but the very spirit of artistic risk-taking. When everything is engineered for maximum appeal, we lose the unpredictability and diversity that make pop culture vibrant in the first place.

The Audience’s Role in the Ecosystem

It’s tempting to point fingers at studios and platforms, but the truth is, audiences are part of this equation too. Our viewing habits, our clicks and our dollars shape what gets made and what gets sidelined. The question isn’t just what Hollywood is serving up, but what we’re hungry for, and whether we’re willing to seek out something new, even when it’s not the first flick recommended on the streaming platform’s homepage.

Rediscovering the Joy of Discovery

Maybe the real challenge for pop culture right now isn’t just to produce more original work, but to rekindle our collective appetite for discovery. To remember what it feels like to be surprised, to encounter something that doesn’t fit neatly into a franchise or a trend. That’s where the magic happens—where art transcends content, and where we, as audiences, become more than just consumers.

So as we wade through another wave of sequels and reboots, maybe the most radical thing we can do is to look beyond the familiar. To champion the weird, the new, the untested. Because in the end, the future of pop culture depends not just on what gets made, but on what we choose to celebrate.

Tune into the podcast this week for more on this topic.

Subscribe now

The Writers Guild of America (WGA), which encompasses the East and West American labor unions that represent writers in film, television, radio, and online media, called for a strike on May 2 after six weeks of negotiating for fair pay. The WGA West tweeted that both the West’s Board of Directors and the East’s Council voted unanimously to call a strike on Tuesday, May 2. Later in the thread, the union explained that its Negotiating Committee has been attempting to reach an agreement with The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which negotiates on the behalf of production companies like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount Plus, and Sony to increase writers’ wages when working on streaming programs.

Eliza Skinner, a writer, actor and producer who has written for multiple late night and award shows, explained in a Tweet, “…do you detect a difference b/t the shows you stream…and the ones you watch through a cable box? Bc we do the same work for both, but we take a HUGE paycut for streaming shows.” The reason for this is largely because writers used to rely heavily on residual checks, and streaming platforms have eradicated this stream of income

Rumors of a strike were already looming during Monday’s Met Gala, and several celebrities are siding with the writers, including Amanda Seyfried, who told Variety, “I don’t get what the problem is. Everything changed with streaming, and everyone should be compensated for their work. It’s f*cking easy.” Other celebs who are writers themselves, like Mindy Kaling and Quinta Brunson also showed their support.

In addition to negotiating equal wages for streaming content, the WGA is also asking to restrict the use of AI in writer’s rooms. The WGA requested for stricter AI regulations, asking to forbid the use of artificial intelligence to write or rewrite content. The studios responded by rejecting the proposal, counter offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.

C. Robert Cargill, a screenwriter who has worked on horror films like “Sinister” and thrillers like “The Black Phone” explained this in a Tweet, “The immediate fear of AI ins’t that us writers will have our work replaced by artificially generated content. It’s that we will be underpaid to rewrite that trash into something we could have done better from the start. This is what the WGA is opposing and the studios want.”

Other celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Edie Falco and Mark Hamill also spoke out in favor of the WGA, voicing their support for writers. Some even joined the picketers on the front lines, including Rob Lowe and Jay Leno, who brought donuts.

The strike could affect the future of several shows. The late night talk shows Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and Late Night With Seth Meyers have already halted production while SNL closed out its season early, cancelling Pete Davidson’s highly anticipated return to the show as a host.

Brittani Nichols, a writer on the hit series Abbott Elementary told Democracy Now!, “We are a show that writes while we air. If this strike goes on for a significant period of time, our show will not come out on time and that could change the amount of episodes which I’m sure people will be very upset about.” Big Mouth, Yellowjackets and Cobra Kai will also have their schedules disrupted by the strike.

This strike ends 15 years of peace between the labor unions and Hollywood studios. If you feel like you’re having dejá vu, that may be because this impasse is extremely reminiscent of the 2007/08 WGA strike over royalties from DVD sales. That strike lasted a long 100 days, causing major hits like Breaking Bad, 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives, Family Guy, Friday Night Lights and Grey’s Anatomy to end their seasons early, effectively altering the show’s trajectory permanently. This strike was also a catalyst for a strong pivot toward unscripted reality TV like Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

Considering we’ve been here before, we can only hope that the AMPTP takes less than three months to do the right thing. In the words of Amanda Seyfried, “It’s f*cking easy.”

Share The Spin Cycle

A tale as old as time: the mediocre but well-connected dude sinks his teeth into the up-and-coming starlet and clings on for dear life to her talent while dismissing her as a human being. It rubbed me the wrong way initially when Florence Pugh and Zach Braff, of “Scrubs” fame, initially debuted their romance as they were 23 and 44 at the time, back in 2019.

While a 21-year age difference can work sometimes, I think it’s a bit challenging when the youngest individual only has a couple of years on the gap itself, but I recognize that Hollywood is odd. Throughout the pandemic, Zach apparently lost several people close to him, and he processed his grief by writing and creating a screenplay, in which the main character is largely inspired by Florence.

florencepugh

A post shared by Florence Pugh (@florencepugh)

During those COVID years, Florence and Zach’s relationship seemed to dominate headlines and appeared to affect Florence’s wellbeing. She posted defensively about it from time to time and tried to keep their breakup quiet for as long as possible when it arrived in early 2022. 

Despite the split, Pugh plays the role she inspired in Braff’s film, Allison, who “is a young woman with a wonderful fiancee, a blossoming career, and supportive family and friends. However, her world crumbles in the blink of an eye when she survives an unimaginable tragedy, emerging from recovery with an opioid addiction and unresolved grief.” 

The LA Times calls Pugh “heartbreaking” in the film while criticizing Braff’s “obvious, melodramatic” choices. Morgan Freeman’s performance is also praised as being “next-level,” and Braff’s vision is given the stamp of being a “haunting slice of real life.” 

On the other hand, the Chicago Tribune calls “A Good Person” “a bad movie about some unreal people” that “starts off on the wrong foot and never finds a solid stride.”

Somehow, I don’t feel compelled to watch this torture porn. I don’t feel moved to watch this young woman be the dancing monkey for her ex-boyfriend’s show. I don’t enjoy the idea of seeing her bare her soul for us to tell his story through his fictional version of her, while she continues to tell tabloids she gets a “lumpy throat” when she talks about their breakup.

It upsets me to see that this blossoming actress of a generation is being sucked dry by a dork who is mostly nose and forehead and better known for his friendships with more talented individuals than for talent of his own. And yet, she delivered another “heartbreaking” performance to bring his vision to life, even after he was done with her romantically.

Entertainment news has danced around this without calling it out in so many words, choosing pull quotes pointedly and writing about their strange working relationship. USA TODAY even used the release of the movie to consult a psychologist about when it’s okay to stay friends with an ex and when it’s better not to.

Zach Braff’s last known relationship ended in March of 2014 with Abercrombie & Fitch model Taylor Bagley, who he’d begun dating when she was 21 and he was 33. They dated for five years and two months, meaning he, like Leonardo DiCaprio, has not dated anyone younger than 28. Nice!

A Good Person debuted on Thursday, March 23, and currently has a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.5/10 on IMDb. I won’t be seeing it.

Film stars have long been our pinnacle of celebrity in the U.S. When you hear the term “Hollywood star” you might picture Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Ben Affleck. Maybe you’ve noticed that they’ve been campaigning (desperately, I might add - it’s almost embarrassing) to get us back in the theaters, but we no longer crave that “special feeling” any longer. TV is all we need now.

Streaming eclipsed the film experience because they’re creating a cinematic universe over 7 to 12 episodes, sometimes for 8 entire seasons. Fans have a chance to get to know characters on a level that they never get a chance to with film stars. Instead, they’re seeing the same faces in new roles every day as opposed to beloved characters experiencing growth and a range of emotions.

For the same reasons, the television star is shining brighter than ever before, outshining that of their film counterparts. Our Instagram feeds are bombarded with Sydney Sweeney and older artists who previously thought they’d reached their peaks are seeing career resurgences through their TV careers like Jennifer Coolidge. Foreign stars are breaking into the largest world markets due to today’s streaming capabilities as well.

And if you think I’m imagining how many people really view their TV via streaming services, the shift first came in July 2022. Now, more people use streaming than cable. On average, just above half of Americans spend one to four hours daily watching TV, and 22% watch four or more hours every day. Meanwhile, movie theaters continue to struggle.

So, what do you think? Does TV officially reign supreme? And with the box offices in such duress where does this leave the music industry?

Last weekend, Billy Eichner’s LGBTQ romantic comedy Bros debuted in theaters, earning only $4.8 million gross in 3,350 locations despite its impressive 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Eichner attributed the movie’s underwhelming performance to widespread homophobia, asserting that “straight people just didn’t show up.” While that may be partially true, there are many other factors that likely prevented the film from reaching its full potential. Let’s take a look.

1. Bad Timing

   The timing of a movie release is extremely strategic and crucial for a film’s box office performance. Rom-coms typically perform best between Valentine’s Day and Labor Day, with a small resurgence around Christmas. The summer months are the most popular time for movie ticket sales as children are out of school and it is a fun outing that offers A/C. With Bros coming out at the very beginning of October, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the flick was showed up by Smile, a horror film. It is horror season after all, and it seems like Universal and the Bros team missed their window. It begs the question whether the studio felt they couldn’t compete with the likes of ELVIS and Jurassic World over the summer.

   

2. Releasing in Theaters

   We’ve heard from stars time and time again how important it is for their films to be shown in theaters. But frankly, I think this has more to do with ego than the “experience” as they claim. (By ‘they,’ I mean Tom Cruise) Even mega-stars like Kevin Hart, Sandra Bullock, Adam Sandler and even Leonardo fucking DiCaprio have starred in films that went straight to streaming platforms.

   Since the pandemic, we’ve changed and most industries have been forced to evolve but that of entertainment has been very resistant to any transformations. The truth is that we’ve gotten comfortable watching movies at home. During the pandemic, plenty of people invested in their homes, adding badass audio systems, purchasing bigger TVs or even building full media rooms. Because of this and the fact that movie theaters are a magnet for teenagers, people are choosing to stay home and stream.

3. The Morality Push

   In marketing this movie, Universal and Eichner touted the film as a must-see, not because of the content of the film but rather its context. They labeled it the “first gay rom-com” and implored audiences to see it as a moral responsibility. While this type of marketing may work for a biopic about a historical figure like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, it’s a bit of a tall order to apply this logic to a light comedy.

   Also, it’s blatantly false. Love, Simon debuted in 2018 and followed a closeted gay teen in Georgia through his journey to self-discovery. According to Wikipedia, Love, Simon grossed $40.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $25.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $66.3 million. It is the 15th highest-grossing teen romance film since 1980, the third-highest by 20th Century Fox after The Fault in Our Stars and Romeo + Juliet.

Look, I love Billy Eichner. I think he’s hilarious. Bros probably is too, but let’s be real here. This movie was unsuccessful because of many factors, not limited to homophobia. Eichner is a great actor and a fantastic comedian but he is a B-list celebrity at best, with a history of mostly supporting roles. To think audiences would show up for him the same way they have for Tom Cruise, Austin Butler and Chris Pratt this year is rooted, in my opinion, in delusion. This movie could have been a smash success had it come out in the summer and over a streaming platform.

Have you seen Bros yet? If you have, spill the tea!