The REAL Reason ‘Bros’ Flopped, And How It Could Still Become A Hit

I’ll be curious to see how the rom-com “Ticket to Paradise” does. My prediction? It’s going to FLOP.

Yup. I predict a Julie Roberts and George Clooney rom-com is going to FLOP.

Why?

Recent history.

Now, over the past week, we’ve seen the ninnies on the far right and far left vomiting ignorant effluvium from their cakeholes about the movie “Bros.” “Bros,” for those of you who don’t know, is a gay rom-com starring a guy most people have never heard of, Billy Eichner. It was described in one article as a “stunningly real depiction of life as a gay man in his forties in New York City.” It completely took a dump at the box office, flopping horribly.

Predictably, the far left shrieked about its failure as being due to homophobia, and the far right yippeed about its failure saying that moral majority America rejected its gay values.

They’re both completely full of shit, as usual.

“Bros” ultimately failed for the same reason I think “Ticket to Paradise” is going to fail.

Because EVERY ROM-COM RELEASED THIS YEAR HAS FAILED. And pretty much all of the rom-coms of the past five years have totally tanked.

Look at the top grossing pictures from 2022. The top 20 are all either action movies, films for little kids, or a couple of horror flicks. There is ONE movie, only ONE that does not fit into any of those descriptions, and that’s “Where The Crawdads Sing,” which barely made the top 20, and had the benefit of being an adaptation of a tremendously successful book, and therefore had a huge built-in audience for the movie.

And that film is a drama.

And the only one.

The other 19 are ALL action movies, children’s films, or horror flicks.

NONE of them are rom-coms, because the genre has been on life support for years.

THAT is why “Bros” failed.

Of course, it also didn’t hurt that it starred a guy who’s only known by a niche audience, or was written for a niche audience, or was seen as commercially viable by a niche audience on the coasts. That’s not exactly the recipe for mass box office success around the country.

But here’s the thing, it could’ve definitely been the recipe for success as a film on Netflix or another streaming service, and it still might end up being the saving grace for “Bros.”

If “Bros” had been released on Netflix, it probably would’ve been among the top five, perhaps the top three, of all shows this week, and all of the sudden, the stories and narrative about it would be far different. We’d be seeing stories about the viability of gay romantic comedies, and how America is ready for these more diverse types of films. And all because instead of it being shoved out into a crapton of mainstream movie theaters where rom-coms have gone to die for years it was instead sent to a place where it could legitimately find an audience.

I honestly think the same thing is going to happen with the Clooney and Roberts film. I don’t think it’s going to do well, I think it’s going to tank, and that’s with ostensibly two of the biggest stars in the world in the movie.

However when it gets to streaming, when it gets to Netflix, I think it’s going to do extremely well.

I could be completely wrong. God knows I certainly have been before.

But if you look at recent history, if you look at what’s succeeding and what’s failing, the success of any rom-com, even one starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney, would be a surprising outlier rather than an expectation.

That needs to be considered when looking at the relative success or failure of “Bros.”

I haven’t seen “Bros.” But I’ve read reviews that have been quite positive. And usually when something like that happens, when a movie stiffs in the theaters but gets great reviews, eventually it starts getting a reputation via word-of-mouth as being something to check out, and it ultimately finds its audience at home. At one point that was on video, now it’s on streaming.

That’s happened with a number of films, including “Office Space,” “Shawshank Redemption,” and “Idiocracy.” All of those performed underwhelmingly at the box office, and all of them found an audience later on, due to their quality and word-of-mouth.

Could “Bros” be the same? Could it end up making its money back, and finding an audience, on Netflix or Hulu? Sure. In Hollywood, it’s often a marathon, not a sprint, when it comes to finding an audience.

Could “Ticket to Paradise” do the same? Sure. But if it does fail, as I predict it will, expect to see the media finally writing about what they should’ve been writing about upon the failure of “Bros” — the fact that rom-coms have been dead for years in terms of the box office.

Where have you gone, Sandra Bullock? A nation turns its dinner-and-a-movie date nights to you…