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*The lack of marketing behind Taraji P. Henson’s ’70s-inspired “Proud Mary” has many fans screaming foul and wondering why Sony’s Screen Gems lacked faith in its ability to perform in the marketplace.
Alissa Wilkinson of vox.com has one theory, “The answer seems pretty obvious. I don’t think Henson is wrong in her presumption that studios aren’t interested in marketing movies about black people overseas, and that logic spills over into their domestic release too.”
She also notes that “Proud Mary is a movie starring a black woman, with an almost entirely black cast. But evidence continues to mount that conventional Hollywood “wisdom” about box office and audiences needs a serious refresh. The world is so often bigger than Hollywood thinks it is. And Proud Mary may turn out to be yet another piece of evidence to throw onto that pile.”
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“And frankly, it boggles the mind that we live in a world in which Proud Mary wasn’t screened for critics, but The Snowman — truly one of the worst-made films I’ve ever seen or expect to see — was,” Wilkinson writes.
Adding, “No studio has to show a film to critics before releasing it, but choosing not to do so usually signals that it’s expecting bad reviews, which creates a narrative around the film in question before anyone has even seen it.”
The basic plot of “Proud Mary” is ripped right out of the pages of a John Cassavetes script, a la his 1980 crime thriller “Gloria,” which starred “Geena Rowlands as a former gang associate who goes on the run with a little boy being hunted by the mob, and the former stars Henson as Mary, the aforementioned hit woman, who takes in 12-year-old Danny (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) after discovering him passed out in an alley with drugs and a gun in his backpack. Oh, and she killed Danny’s father, so it’s her fault that he ended up on the streets in the first place,” per AV Club.
And while the “Hidden Figures” star has a box office record that proves she can carry a film on the big screen, there are some whispers that Sony/Screen Gems failed on their marketing duties because Taraji “turned down the advances of the person who has the money to spend” on promoting it.
Do you believe that rumor or nah?
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