Warner Bros. killed one of the best movies of the year, now it’s a hit

By Drew Dietsch | Published 3 days ago

Jury #2 It’s the kind of movie audiences used to see before the blockbuster takeover: a tense, high-concept, adult thriller that’s not full of spectacle and bombast. Directed by the iconic Clint Eastwood, a simple but complex story of a juror clinging to a horrible secret manages to maintain its tension and drama for less than two hours. It’s the kind of movie we took for granted before Marvel changed movie theaters forever.

And that’s pretty evident since Warner Bros. decided to kill Jury #2 even before it had a real chance at the box office.

Warner Bros. is guilty

Originally, Jury #2 It was going directly to Max, the streaming service from Warner Bros. Immediately, movie fans were confused because the film was not going to receive a wide theatrical release. It has a notable cast, is a polished production, and comes from a director with a storied history in the film studio. The idea that the film was going to skip theaters entirely was more than a little strange.

Then, Warner Bros. changed their tune and decided to give Jury #2 an extremely limited theatrical career in the United States. The film was shown in fewer than fifty theaters nationwide, and Warner Bros. did not report box office earnings. Fortunately, the film was released in international theaters, but that’s rarely enough to make a dent in the cultural landscape these days.

Now, Jury #2 will head to Max to air on December 20 and will be branded as a Max Original. Will it find a larger audience there than in movie theaters? We’ll never know thanks to Warner Bros., but we can report something that seems obvious: people really like this movie.

Juror #2 is a big hit, no thanks to Warner Bros.

Jury #2 released on the video-on-demand rental platform iTunes and immediately reached the number one spot. As of this writing, it is still the number one movie on iTunes five days later. Audiences were clearly intrigued by the film and energized enough to spend their money renting it. In an age where “I’ll wait until it ends on my streaming service” has become the de facto position for many consumers’ attitudes toward movies, watching a movie like Jury #2 Getting such a huge response from people willing to rent says something worthwhile.

Audiences will always come to see your next blockbuster that has a multi-million dollar marketing campaign behind it. Everyone excited by the historic success of Barbie They don’t seem to represent that movie’s billion-dollar marketing budget. a movie like Jury #2 – surely given an infinitesimal fraction of BarbieThe marketing budget of: managed to eliminate the noise of any other content competing for your attention. People want to see this movie.

So, good job, Warner Bros., for shooting yourself in the foot again with a highly celebrated adult film. I hesitate to throw it away Jury #2 will do wonders for your Max subscription numbers. Maybe the reason we don’t have movies like Jury #2 as often as we should it has less to do with the audience and more to do with movie studios not knowing what the hell they’re doing.

Look Jury #2. It’s a very good film that shouldn’t need to struggle to find its audience.