It’s a business. Just because you liked the film, that does not mean it will be a commercial success, which was my point.

Funny how all the left wingers who can’t understand how people vote for Trump can’t understand that the masses might not go to see this movie.

This is no different from the Swifties, who spew hate at me fifteen years later. They’re defending their turf. The rest of the public?

Shrugs.

The goal of making a major motion picture is to make money, how do you achieve that?

If you have a niche product, then your film must be extremely good, so great that it engenders word of mouth, such that people who were not paying attention in the first place are going to be motivated to go.

This is what happened with the Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown.” It opened domestically the first weekend to $11,655,553 and then continued to $23.2 million in the first week and ultimately $140 in all.

As for Bruce’s movie… The initial three day gross was $9.1 million.

However, unlike “A Complete Unknown,” the reviews were not so positive. The Dylan flick has an 82 critics’ rating on RottenTomatoes as opposed to “Deliver Me From Nowhere”‘s 61. So will the general public be inspired to see it? Will people enjoy it if they aren’t fans of Bruce? You needed to know nothing about Bob to enjoy his movie, as for the Boss? 

Now $9.1 million may seem close to $11,655,553, but the devil is in the details… “A Complete Unknown” opened in 2,835 theatres and “Deliver Me From Nowhere” opened in 3.460.

As for international…

Let me quote “Variety”:

“‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ a musical biopic about the making of his beloved 1982 acoustic solo album ‘Nebraska,’ is falling flat with $7 million at the international box office and $16.1 million globally. Analysts suggest the film is struggling because unlike, say, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Rocketman,’ which were all-encompassing, crowd-pleasing looks at Queen and Elton John, ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’ focuses on one, less commercial chapter in Springsteen’s expansive, decade-spanning career.”

https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/box-office-springsteen-fizzles-overseas-black-phone-2-hits-80-million-1236561522/

There you have it.

And if that’s not enough for you:

“‘Springsteeen’ Box-Office Ain’t Glory Days”

“Though he delivered a number of worldwide hits, quintessentially American rocker Bruce Springsteen hasn’t been able to translate that into box-office success.

“The biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” was released in multiple markets this weekend alongside its U.S. release and is bombing – the title earning just $7 million overseas. At the same time, its domestic debut is coming in smaller than projected – slipping slightly to $9.1 million and fourth place.

“Budgeted at $55 million, the film’s audience exit scores haven’t been strong, with the blame going less on the film’s makers or cast – rather its subject matter. Namely, the choice to focus on Springsteen’s depression and his arthouse album “Nebraska”. While critics may love it, the album has none of the major hits that made him a global superstar.”

“Springsteen” Box-Office Ain’t Glory Days

I could quote stories ad infinitum, but I think you get it.

I remember hearing “29 Palms” on “Fate of Nations,” Robert Plant’s 1993 return to form, and wondering why it wasn’t a hit. I was speaking with Danny Buch, the Atlantic promotion man responsible, and he said they tried with the song and album at rock radio, but the music didn’t react, it didn’t resonate with the audience, and therefore radio stations dropped it. Does not speak to the quality of the tunes, but the audience reaction.

Once again, it’s a business.

So you want to make a profit. You have the budget, the marketing and the theatrical gross, of which only half comes back to the studio. DVDs are dead, but there are streaming television licensing fees. That means so far, the studio is only entitled to $8.05 million of the proceeds on the Springsteen movie. How is it going to make its money back on a $55 million budget?

It’s not.

Now not every picture goes into profit, but a bunch of them better, or…

So looking for the highest grosses, studios decided to make big budget pictures that could play around the world…believe me, the average person in China is not a Bruce Springsteen fan… Ergo, superhero movies, high concept flicks. But along the way, the world changed. Now China has its own domestic production, with 2025’s “Ne Zha 2,” which has grossed in excess of $2 billion dollars (“Ne Zha,” released in 2019, grossed $707 million).

Now you might tell the studio to make cheaper films. But the irony is it may cost just as much to promote/market a $2 million film as it does a $50 million film. So the opportunity cost is just too high.

But by stopping the production of more adult/meaningful fare, by stopping taking risks, whole swaths of the public have given up on the theatregoing experience. YOU may have gone to see the “Springsteen” film this weekend, but most Boomers and Gen-X’ers never go to the theatre at all.

So the question is…is theatrical movie distribution dead?

Well, looking at summer grosses, as the year is not over yet… 2025 sits at $1.6 billion…whereas in 2019 it was $2.6 billion. It’s going in the wrong direction.

A great picture will draw people to the theatre… But those are always left field productions that no one thought would become juggernauts. Think of “Star Wars,” even “Pulp Fiction.” They were sui generis. Where are the unique titles made and promoted by the studios today? Nonexistent, because the cost and ultimate risk is too high.

Begging the question whether a pivot is necessary…

Which is what Netflix is. It was such a joke in Hollywood that everybody licensed their content to the streaming company, helping them build a monolith while they were left behind. Can you see why the Springsteen movie is a dud?

If not, you know nothing about business…

Now it costs much less to make and promote an album than a movie… And the business used to be based on growing nobodies into ubiquitous somebodies. But the majors can’t manage to do that anymore. So, like the studios, they’ve retreated to signing and promoting that which will theoretically appeal to the largest audience…which is rarely unique…unique is too hard to sell!

Meanwhile, developing indie acts don’t spend 200k making an album.

But we live in an emotional world. Facts are secondary in not only politics, but the arts. And when confronted with the truth, no one wants to acknowledge it.

Split Ticketmaster from Live Nation and ticket prices will go down?

Don’t make me laugh.

As for the ticket fees… Without them, there’s no show, they’re part of the budget. But the acts won’t tell you that…they too beat up on the fees, even though the benefit from them…and Ticketmaster is paid to take the heat.

You may be an early adopter with a broad audience able to influence others. But everybody knows word of mouth doesn’t happen unless the product is good.

But if it’s good, something can build over time.

But with the movie business you get one shot, you fire all your guns at once, and if you don’t go boffo at the b.o. right away…good luck. Hell, insiders can tell whether a film will make money within HOURS of its opening.

You’re entitled to your personal biases. But if you think everyone is going to agree with you, even if you’re angry about it, you’re wrong.

Enjoy what you want, there are no rules. But that does not mean what you enjoy others will.

As for “Deliver Me From Nowhere”… As a streaming project with a low budget… The Mötley Crüe movie “The Dirt” only has a 37% RottenTomatoes rating…but I watched it, the viewing experience was baked into my Netflix subscription. As for the budget, it was less than half of the Springsteen flick, $23.1 million.

Netflix doesn’t need to have every project hit. Just enough that people won’t give up their subscriptions. And it’s always the left field, unexpected productions that become a cultural phenomenon. Like “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game.” They were not promoted for eighteen months ahead of time. They were dropped on the service and people checked them out, enjoyed them, told everybody they knew about them and then you had to watch the series to be in the know, to participate in conversation.

Meanwhile, Hollywood can’t stop beating up Netflix for not opening its films in theatres. As box office goes down, the studios consolidate and…

The worm turns.

Turn with it.

Tune in Saturday October 25th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

We had to endure eighteen months of hype for this?

My favorite review was in the “Wall Street Journal”:

“It’s like a Mariah Carey movie about a Bruce Springsteen album.”

On Metacritic it gets a whopping 60.

On RottenTomatoes it did better, it got a 61!

“Bohemian Rhapsody” was a fluke. That’s what’s great about filmed entertainment, as William Goldman once said, “Nobody knows anything.” and as a result we’re regularly surprised. Superhero movies don’t meet expectations, and then there are left field pictures that succeed, like the Queen biopic, which grossed $910.8 million on a budget just north of $50 million. A movie that featured a guy who’s been dead for decades with a group whose hits are in the far distant past? A niche effort on the surface, but it resonated with the public. People feel warm about Queen. No other band has come up with a song as outré as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Freddie Mercury was the consummate frontman/showman. But still, nearly a billion bucks?

So in a business where if it worked once, it must work again, we’ve had a number of musical biopics since. The Elton John movie “Rocketman” was no “Bohemian Rhapsody, it grossed $195.3 million on a budget of about $40 million… So when it was all said and done, with ancillary rights included, “Rocketman” made a profit. But also, it was released at the same time as Elton was on his final tour… There was a tie-in, built-in promotion, the world was excited about Elton. But Bruce Springsteen and “Nebraska’? An entire movie about an album Paul Rappaport had to beg rock radio to play? A record that stands outside Bruce’s oeuvre? Sure, fans know it, but the general public doesn’t know the songs… Which are dark, anything but upbeat like with Queen and Elton. Who thought this was a good idea?

The Bob Dylan movie “A Complete Unknown,” grossed $140.5 million on a budget somewhere between $50 and $70 million. But the Dylan movie had a hook, a story, an arc, the run-up to Newport. Furthermore, the film got good reviews!

And Springsteen is still alive, recording and touring… How is anybody going to portray him believably? As for Dylan…he’s such an enigma, no one knows who he really is other than himself. And Springsteen was all over MTV, unlike Dylan, we know Springsteen, why do we need this movie?

Starring the guy from “The Bear”?

Jeremy Allen White is good in that show, but the only people who believed he could carry this Springsteen film are those involved in making it.

And it will be forgotten soon, after it leaves theatres after lousy grosses, it’s not going to hurt the Boss, BUT WHY DID WE NEED THIS?

But even worse is the hype. We had to endure all the stories, they went on ad infinitum, you’d think it was Elvis come back from the dead.

Meanwhile, “KPop Demon Hunters” launches on Netflix and becomes a phenomenon.

Ted Sarandos just said:

“‘We believe that “KPop Demon Hunters” worked because it was first released on Netflix,’ Sarandos said. ‘We had something that people fell in love with … but not in a huge way on the first day or even the first weekend.'”

This is why Netflix is eating the studios’ lunch. You make a lot of product, you don’t know what will be successful, and you don’t bother to hype it in advance and it sinks or swims on the service. And if it starts to catch fire, the barrier to entry is incredibly low, there are nearly a hundred million U.S. homes with Netflix subscriptions, so if you hear about something, you can just fire the app right up and check it out, AT NO ADDITIONAL COST!

Who is going to pay $20 to go see “Deliver Me from Nowhere” in the theatre… Hard core Boss fans, and that’s it.

The public is not stupid, they check the buzz before they lay down their money, they don’t want to get ripped-off, in time or cash. By the day of launch you know if a film is alive or a turkey…

Meanwhile, a turkey can succeed on Netflix. I mean if you’re not paying, why not check out a Springsteen biopic? Think of all the mediocre stuff you’ve sat through on the flat screen!

But by time the Springsteen film hits streaming… You can’t raise buzz twice. You get one shot. And now this film is dead in the water.

Spend less and make more. Why waste all this cash on such a risky project? It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes, it’s a circle jerk.

Even the music business has flipped. Now albums releases are often surprises, the hype doesn’t begin until the record hits Spotify, or close thereto. Meanwhile, today’s acts make much more music than the acts of the seventies and eighties, they can put out three albums a year! And they know a hit is nice, but they’re playing to their hard core fan base, who are keeping them alive. For all the hype about the new Swift album, did you listen to it? You don’t have to for her to make bank! She’s got fans laying down cash for over thirty vinyl variants!

We can discuss the brewing backlash, but that’s not my point, my point is today EVERYTHING is niche, and don’t waste our time promoting broadly that which is not. It’s not the pre-internet era, with squibs in “Time” magazine ahead of release date, never mind Thursday night commercials on network television, which the target audience no longer watches, may not even have access to!

But the film business keeps doing it the same way, only they’re making fewer movies and hoping for moonshots.

They don’t want singles and doubles, the opportunity cost is too high. This is what is killing the major labels… If it doesn’t have a chance of going nuclear, of the act becoming a superstar, they don’t even sign you. Meanwhile, indie market share keeps growing… Then again, the majors are buying up all the indie distributors…which is why there’s a kerfuffle over the Downtown acquisition.

You’ve got to adjust. And you must realize you can burn the audience out by banging their heads with hype over and over again for a mediocre product that does not deserve it.

Once again, in the information age, we know INSTANTLY whether something is good or bad…that’s a feature, not a bug…even though the movie industry hates it, because they can no longer pull the wool over our eyes with bad product.

So stop making musical biopics. Unless they’re cheap.

And they’re items that should go straight to streaming anyway.

As for those involved…

They won’t admit this project was flawed in conception and not great in result, they’ll blame the failure on the audience, or the exhibitors, anybody but themselves.

Whoever greenlit this picture should be fired.

We can question whether there is even a future for theatrical distribution, but one thing is for sure, it won’t be propped up by junk like this. Hell, Netflix put “KPop Demon Hunters” on streaming and THEN took it to theatres!

This is baby boomer thinking. The same people who insist we must go to the theatre to see a flick. The same people who said the MP3 didn’t sound good enough…it did for the majority of the public, which is rejecting higher resolution music, seeing it as unnecessary, not buying the DACs to hear it, and a film on the giant television sets of today…is oftentimes a much better experience than the theatre… Forget that it’s not overpriced, no one is texting or talking, the floors are not sticky, the popcorn is not expensive and you can pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Case closed!

Steve Jobs was famous for excising past technology and forcing the public into the new. He went all USB when Windows machines were cluttered with legacy ports…

You’ve got to live in the present, you’ve got to adjust for changed conditions, you must pivot, or be forgotten… Just like all the acts who used to get paid by the labels to make music… The big budget days are never coming back, but oldsters keep complaining that the new paradigm is not fair, while they refuse to post on social media and monetize in new ways.

Once again, we had to wait this long to find out this picture is substandard?

I want to make someone pay. The somnambulant entertainment press, which repeats what the studios say, rubber stamping these films just like Congress goes along with Trump.

There is always a day of reckoning. And for the Springsteen flick, it came today.

It’s NOWHERE!

Peter Guralnick has written the definitive Elvis Presley books, “Last Train to Memphis” and “Careless Love.” His latest is about Elvis’s manager, “The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the Partnership that Rocked the World.” 

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/peter-guralnick/id1316200737?i=1000733121871

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/40a99a83-89d4-4894-9e39-c02fb6dac5c1/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-peter-guralnick