On today’s episode, Variety’s Rebecca Rubin breaks down the 10 Broadway Stars to Watch list.
Rubin reels off the impressive stats that Swift racked up again with her surprise move to release a film celebrating her new album “The Life of a Showgirl” in theaters in partnership with AMC Theatres for one weekend only. For one, she observes, the marketing campaign has been largely executed through Swift’s own social media handles.
Related Stories
“There’s definitely an unknowable quantity. If it could have made even more money had she announced this a month ago, put tickets on sale a month ago. But that being said, to have made $33 million domestically and roughly $46 million globally in just three days is a very impressive feat,” Rubin says. “And that is because it has been pretty minimally promoted outside of her social media feeds. It’s not like it’s had this grand marketing push from a studio behind it. And so it does really speak to her singular power right now to mobilize her fan base.”
Popular on Variety
For Johnson and A24’s “The Smashing Machine,” the hardcore fans turned out, just not enough of them.
“If it were not for Taylor Swift, this would have been a really, really bleak weekend at the box office because ‘The Smashing Machine’ bombed with $6 million and heading into the weekend. this is the lowest opening weekend for Dwayne Johnson of his career. And part of the disconnect there, I think, is that he is in a type of role that audiences are not necessarily used to seeing him in. He is best known for family friendly or franchises like ‘Jumanji’ or ‘Fast and Furious.’ And so this role, which is much more in the arthouse lane and much more dramatic, was at odds with how audiences know him.”
Cox walks through Variety’s eclectic choices for 10 Broadway Stars to Watch. This list often recognizes those who have worked on Broadway for a few years and are on the cusp of rising to a new level of prominance. Cox points to director Lileana Blain-Cruz as a perfect example.
Blain-Cruz has been on Broadway once before. A few years ago, she did a production of Thornton Wilder’s ‘The Skin of Our Teeth,’ which is surreal and very strange. And some people loved that production, and some people were less excited about it, because it’s a weird show to do. I was one of the folks who loved it, and she is now making what I think will be a really big Broadway splash with a new musical adaptation of ‘Purple Rain’ that she is working on with Branden Jacobs Jenkins, who is the Tony winning, MacArthur winning playwright. He’s one of our best playwrights. And if anyone is going to do something really interesting with ‘Purple Rain’ and this re-imagining of the film’s story, it’s going to be Branden and it’s going to be Liliana who’s on this list.”
YouTube Podcast channel, Spotify and other podcast platforms.
