This past year was an interesting one for comedy. We saw the Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney movie Anyone But You rake in the bucks, with over $200 million at the box office. And we saw Barbie, a comedy franchise and event movie, rocket over $1.5 billion. These comedy films made a lot of money for their studios, and also were so much fun to watch with an audience in theaters. It brought me back to the heydey of the early 2000s, when comedies got major theatrical releases with stars. The king of that era was writer, producer, and director Judd Apatow, whose landmark movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up brought in audiences and became part of the cultural lexicon. Then came the rise of tentpoles and comic book films, and comedies kind of disappeared from big theatrical film, relegated to TV, streaming, and indies, For what its worth, Apatow didn't lose hope that comedies will be back thriving on the big screen like they did back then. Apatow told Vulture that we just need more hits to prove to Hollywood that comedies belong in theaters. He points to Barbie as proof comedy in theaters is not dead, saying, "I would say that’s wrong, because the highest-grossing comedy last year made over a billion dollars. Barbie was a comedy, you know?" When Vulture pushed back on that idea, saying that Barbie is more IP, like Marvel, than a comedy, Apatow responded, "I don’t think so. It’s not a...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Wednesday, 27 March