No, your eyes do not deceive you: There is a movie called Nightbitch tearing up the charts on Disney+, and it’s not the streaming service’s remake of Lady and the Tramp (though that does exist). Nightbitch actually only appears on the Disney site if you’ve bundled that streaming service with its sibling Hulu, where new movies from Fox and Fox Searchlight tend to land after or instead of running in theaters. The Amy Adams-starring Nightbitch is sort of a hybrid in that area: It probably seems like a straight-to-Hulu movie because damned if anyone had much of a chance to catch it during its nominal theatrical release in early December, where parent company Disney welcomed it into a handful of theaters and then refused to report its (likely meager) box office earnings. Essentially, it received the kind of release Netflix gives its prestige titles to qualify them for awards (sometimes as more of a just-in-case or sign of contractual obligation than as a genuine expectation that trophies will be forthcoming).
Netflix only ever seems to release movies in theaters grudgingly, however; Disney has gotten back into theatrical in a big way, even as it sends lots of Fox and Searchlight titles straight to Hulu. The difference-maker here is that at some point – probably around the time it was greenlit – someone quite reasonably saw the teaming of writer-director Marielle Heller and acting powerhouse Adams as a movie that might have Oscar, or at least Golden Globes potential. On the latter, they weren’t entirely wrong; Adams did squeak into the Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy category at the Globes (sadly, Nightbitch is not a musical, though it’s not exactly a raucous comedy, either). But as the movie’s reviews came in mixed out of its festival premiere earlier in the fall, someone made the call to essentially demote the movie back to streaming without bypassing theaters entirely.
Disney isn’t the only conglomerate punting on what might have been a name-driven theatrical movie for adults a decade ago. Warner Bros. caused a stir when the studio revealed that Clint Eastwood’s film Juror #2 would be receiving a similar non-event of a theatrical release: 50 or so theaters, unreported box office, and a streaming premiere on Max shortly thereafter. Despite the lack of transparency, Juror #2 seems, anecdotally and relatively, to have been a bigger hit than Nightbitch, in that several theaters held it over for several weeks (initially, there were rumors it was a one-week-only engagement, which is effectively what Nightbitch got). It also earned largely sparkling reviews, praising an old-fashioned sense of potboiler craft infused with a noirish sense of dread over a possible moral reckoning. It wasn’t just an Eastwood-directed movie, but a prime example of what he does well as a filmmaker.
The thing is, it makes sense why Disney and Warner would look at these movies and think they’d have a better shot at streaming success than theatrical. Looking at the list of the biggest-grossing 2024 movies so far, what’s the closest thing to movies that depend more on story, some kind of star power, and adult characters than on spectacle, franchises, or the appearance of all-ages fun? Probably It Ends with Us, a big summer hit (and current Netflix chart champ) that’s also based on a bestselling novel. Nightbitch is from a novel, too, and Juror #2 feels like it could be based on one of the better John Grisham books, but it’s not quite the same as boasting Colleen Hoover’s fanbase. Moving further down the list, there are some more apt comparisons: Challengers, A Complete Unknown, and Conclave, which is technically still in some theaters but is also more widely available on Peacock.
Conclave had a respectable theatrical run, but it feels like a movie that, in past years, would have made twice as much money. Meanwhile, A Complete Unknown is doing what its Disney/Searchlight stablemate Nightbitch was presumed unfit for: Actually competing with a bunch of family-oriented movies at the holiday box office. This year, things were especially PG, with Mufasa, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Moana 2, and Wicked all family-friendly movies; no wonder the dark, bloody, horny Nosferatu remake is cleaning up with the adults. Compare this to the season a decade ago, with one all-ages mega-blockbuster in the form of a new Star Wars movie, but also a grisly and star-driven survival adventure for adults (The Revenant), a comedy-drama about financial shenanigans (The Big Short), comedies both R-rated (Sisters) and PG-13 (Daddy’s Home), a nasty Quentin Tarantino western (The Hateful Eight), and even a damn movie about a mop (Joy). All of these did bigger business than Conclave, and A Complete Unknown is likely to surpass just a few of them at best.
This creates sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario: Are Conclave, Juror #2, and Nightbitch mostly-streaming movies because studios won’t give them stronger theatrical releases, or are they not given stronger releases because a slate as diverse as 2015 will no longer sell tickets? There’s another bizarre paradox at work, too: In the past, dumping a movie into a few dozen theaters would consign it to obscurity for at least half a year. No one would see it in theaters, and its next shot would come in a video release three to six months down the line. Now Nightbitch attracts a substantial number of eyeballs mere weeks after tanking theatrically.
That also probably helps the movie itself: Divorced from initial awards buzz or the expectations of a big fall release, it’s presumably easier to appreciate the movie’s sharply rendered observations about motherhood and the fearless Amy Adams performance at its center, rather than feeling let down by the fact that its body-horror side is underdeveloped or the way it grants its characters a certain measure of easy solution to complicated, realistic problems. Juror #2, too, probably benefits from a lack of genuine awards buzz, even if some critics have put it on their best-of-the-year lists. What Eastwood brings to it as a director is best appreciated as an extra dimension on a suspenseful courtroom thriller, rather than a heavily hyped rumination on the justice system.
Similarly, this may be why Conclave has some extra awards-season juice: Its papal-choice saga may not have much depth, but the big-screen experience (however limited compared to its decade-ago prospects) affords it a certain perceived respectability. Without more movies aiming for that kind of reputation boost, future December-January movie lineups may have adults further discouraged from turning to the multiplex, and replacing it with their streaming channels. For this year, at least, there’s been something of a flip: Families who might have gathered together to rewatch a holiday classic could be enticed out to the movies with any number of options, while movies like these three replicate the grown-ups-at-the-multiplex experience at home.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
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