After months of hard work, countless hours of promotion, and investing an untold number of sleepless nights, Billy Eichner’s latest film, Bros , has officially hit theaters.
Unfortunately for Billy, the box office was far from kind to his proverbial passion project. This has caused Eichner to begin lashing out at the movie-going audience at large. In particular, straight men .
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The movie business is an incredibly cut-throat industry.
In order to survive as an actor and as a filmmaker, you have to live and die by your numbers. Unfortunately, close only counts in horseshoes, and hand grenades — box office numbers are no different.
Unfortunately, for ‘Bob’s Burgers’ breakout star, Billy Eichner, it’s a harsh reality that he’s been forced to experience firsthand.
Billy’s latest film Bros puts a gay new twist on the classic romantic comedy trope. But despite receiving rave reviews and being “Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes — the film barely managed to scrape in $4.8 million on its opening weekend.
That’s against a budget of over $22 million.
It’s not unheard of for a film to pick up steam as time goes on, but generally speaking, opening weekend is where filmmakers look to recoup the bulk of their budget.
Billy is understandably disappointed and he’s putting the blame on one socio-demographic group in particular: straight men.
“Even with glowing reviews, great Rotten Tomatoes scores, an A CinemaScore etc, straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros ,” Eichner tweeted.
This is an especially crushing blow for Eichner, considering how difficult it was to get the movie made in the first place.
Billy invested countless hours to ensure that his movie would find an audience. Once he did that, certain theater chains began pulling the trailer — due to the gay content.
However, censorship couldn’t stop ‘Rolling Stone’ from naming ‘Bros’ one of the best comedies of the 21st century.
It would appear that the vast majority of Twitter users are in full agreement, and have voiced an overwhelming show of support for Bros.
“Looks fantastic. You gotta love when a comedy is actually packed with jokes,” Alex Rabinowitz tweeted out.
Some were even upset that they’d been forced to wait so long. “It’s unfair to expect us to wait until September 30. Please amend the release date ASAP . Many thanks,” @EdHotTV wrote.
Overall, ‘Bros’ box office numbers put it 5th on the overall list for the Sept. 30th weekend.
Coming in at the number one spot was Smile, which opened to the tune of a whopping $22 million . Followed by Don’t Worry Darling , The Woman King , and James Cameron’s re-released Avatar.
However, Eichner remains hopeful that the public may yet come out and see his film.
“Last night, I snuck in and sat in the back of a sold out[sic] theater playing Bros , in LA. The audience howled with laughter from start to finish ,” Eichner tweeted.
“Burst into applause at the end, and some were wiping away tears as they walked out. It was truly magical.”
Turning his attention back to the absent straight male audience, Billy has a message that he hopes they’ll heed.
“Everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo should go see BROS tonight! You will have a blast!” he said.
Eichner once again reiterated just how special and important this type of movie is, especially for the queer audience who so seldom get to see themselves represented in such a manner.
