Were ‘Blockers’ and ‘Game Night’ the Last Great Studio Comedies?

Once upon a time, there was a magical six-week period in which two separate R-rated studio comedies were released in theaters to great critical and commercial success. The teams behind those comedies—Blockers and Game Night, both of which live on in memes and viral clips, like the one of Jesse Plemons wondering about the business strategy of Frito-Lay—aren’t sure something like it will ever happen again. ”It’s nice to talk about something that was successful,” Blockers director Kay Cannon tells Game Night filmmakers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein in a group conversation facilitated by Vanity Fair.

Especially in the post-pandemic period, she continues, studios “don’t make as many theatrically-released comedies. And if one of them is terrible, then they’re just like, Oh, comedies don’t work.” Indeed, the number of fresh, non-IP comedies released in theaters these days is almost nonexistent; when a movie like that does get a big platform, it’s as if the weight of the entire genre rests on its shoulders, as evidenced by the amount of think pieces last year based around Jennifer Lawrence’s No Hard Feelings.

That’s why the one-two punch of Game Night and Blockers feels like it could be the last great moment in studio comedy. Released on February 23, 2018, the former film follows a group of friends as their regularly scheduled event takes an unexpected turn when one of the players is kidnapped. Though it was in theaters at the same time as Black Panther, Daly and Goldstein’s sophomore directorial effort managed over $100 million at the box office worldwide, thanks to creative direction, clever gags, and a winning ensemble that included Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, and Plemons.

Cannon’s directorial debut, Blockers, arrived a few weeks later, on April 6. Her film tracks three parents (John Cena, Leslie Mann, and Ike Barinholtz) on a mission to stop their daughters from losing their virginity on prom night. Powered by surprising performances and strong chemistry (not to mention Cena chugging a beer through his butt), the sex comedy opened to $20 million at the domestic box office, on the way to a total haul of $94 million globally.

As they work on their next projects, Cannon, Daley, and Goldstein came together for an in-depth discussion about making Blockers and Game Night, bracing for failure, resisting sequels, trying to navigate the state of the comedy film, and being really annoyed by The Martian.

Vanity Fair: So here we are, fondly reflecting on a time when two studio comedies could be released in theaters and actually do well. When your films were released, did it feel like a big deal?

Kay Cannon: It was the first thing I’d ever directed, and I was at the premiere and one of the producers was like, “If there’s not a two in front of that number on opening weekend, it’s a failure.” [Laughs.] It had tested well, and we went to SXSW and it did really great there. And then I was like, But none of that matters—are people going to go watch it who aren’t in the business? I was such a stressful mess. Judd Apatow was at the premiere and I went to him and was like, “Why do people do this? Why do people make movies?”

Jonathan Goldstein: For us, they decided to release Game Night the second weekend of Black Panther. I remember having a conversation with the head of distribution at Warner Bros., and he was like, “Yeah, we just don’t think that one’s going to do the kind of numbers that other Marvel movies have done.” And, of course, it was enormous.

John Francis Daley: The fear was baked in. Also, it was our second film, and [2015’s Vacation] really traumatized us, specifically in terms of critical reception. So the whole time that we were ramping up for Game Night, we were talking about fake headlines from trades and critics. Like, “Game Night Rolls a Zero.”

Goldstein: “The Only Thing Worse Than a Real Game Night Is Watching Game Night.”

Daley: “It’s Game Over for Game Night.”

Goldstein: But it did perform quite well, given the headwinds of a $100 million second weekend of Black Panther. We would get a call from the head of New Line every weekend after, saying it had the lowest drop, week to week, in New Line history.

Cannon: Well, when you have a movie titled Cock Blockers, minds are much different.

Goldstein: When did they make you change the title?

Cannon: It was called The Pact, which we knew we weren’t going to name it because there were already a couple other movies named The Pact. Universal sent T-shirts and a poster to my assistant, and they were like, “Sit Kay down and reveal this title that we’ve come up with that we know is going to be great.” She looked at it before she showed it to me, with this rooster with “Blockers” underneath it, and she was like, “Oof, I don’t know.” [Laughs.] And then I called it “Cuck-a-doo Blockers” the whole time. I sort of love it now.

Goldstein: Both our films got very good critical reception, especially for comedies, where you just expect, because it’s a comedy, they’re going to shave 25 points off your Rotten Tomatoes score.

Daley: At that point in culture, it seemed like people had turned on comedies. There wasn’t that love fest that I feel like comedies were getting in the early 2000s. I remember bracing myself for the worst, both critically and box office.

Cannon: Now, it’s even worse. It’s so hard.

Daley: So hard. You just have to disguise your comedy as anything else.

Is that why all three of you have moved toward other genres and putting new spins on existing properties? Did it seem like an uphill battle to push another completely original comedy through the studio system?

Goldstein: It’d be really hard for us to do something without any laughs in it; it’s sort of baked into our creative DNA. Even if we made a horror movie or a really dark drama, I think there would be a little bit of comedy to it. With something like Dungeons & Dragons, it lent itself to that because the gameplay, at its best, is laugh-out-loud funny.

Cannon: I made Cinderella for my daughter. Pitch Perfect was PG-13 and Blockers is R, and I was like, I think I want to see what this PG space would be like. And I really wanted to make a musical. But I’m with you: I can’t make anything that doesn’t have jokes in it. And I wish I could because it’d be so much easier!

Daley: The most timeless gripe that comedic filmmakers have had with the industry is that they’re not taken as seriously. And it is a total bummer, in sort of the same vein that animated movies aren’t considered quite the same as live-action. It would be nice to have a seat at the table, and, like, when something is nominated for best comedy at the Golden Globes, maybe it’s actually a comedy!

Goldstein: As opposed to The Martian. I don’t remember laughing much.

Cannon: The Martian really got us! That one stuck with us. [Laughs.]

Daley: Yeah, it did. It was that final thorn. But, frankly, it’s total bullshit and needs to be changed.

Kay, as you said, Blockers was your directorial debut, and John and Jonathan, maybe there was some pressure in figuring out your second go-around after the reception to Vacation. So what was it about these projects that sucked you in?

Cannon: Well, I was offered to direct something, so I was like, Yeah, I’ll take it. [Laughs.] I mean, in all honesty, it was, like, Wait, I don’t have to do the dance? They’re just asking me to direct it? But when I read it, I just knew what I wanted to do with it and what I wanted to say. And I felt like, on paper, it can be considered a dumb idea. But what I always try to do with my stuff is make it super funny, but then make you feel something—really laugh and cry in the same movie. And when you can accomplish that, then this sort of dumb idea begins actually culturally shifting the conversations that parents have with their kids about sex.

Daley: And you were able to so deftly tackle these things without it feeling preachy at any point.

Goldstein: I thought you subverted the tropes in a really great way. There’s so many cliches in a teen sex comedy, and, for example, all the boys in the movie are not aggressors, they’re not antagonists. It would’ve been so easy to make one of them a little bit overly aggressive, and suddenly it’s a very different movie.

For us, with Game Night, some of our favorite movies are heist or crime movies with a great twist that happens in the third act. And we felt like comedy hadn’t done a lot of that, where you genuinely surprise the audience with the turn. And we also saw an opportunity to elevate the visuals, because there was a bit of a laziness in comedy directing. We’re big fans of Judd Apatow, but so much of that was improvising by the actors, and it limited how creative you can be with your coverage because they’re talking in real-time. We thought, If we get the actors to mainly stick to the script and we know exactly where they’re going to be, we can shoot it in a way that is very designed.

Cannon: Have you guys seen that the Jesse Plemons clip with the little dog was on Twitter just yesterday?

Daley: Oh, did someone post that scene?

Cannon: Yeah, and then it starts a trend all over again of everyone sharing it.

Daley: That character was something that we were also very excited about, because we loved the idea of having a character that is entirely out of a different movie and never looks at the audience and shows that he’s in on the joke.

Goldstein: Even at the table read for that movie, we were laughing our asses off at Jesse’s performance. He completely got how funny that character was without being funny.

He’s an Oscar-nominated actor but I think many people point to Game Night as his best performance.

Goldstein: Yeah, it’s really his breakout role.

Cannon: Friday Night Lights season two, no thank you!

Goldstein: It’s funny, you have one person in your cast like that, and everybody ups their game and wants to be as good as Jesse.

I asked a couple of writer friends if they had any burning questions for this conversation and the immediate response I got was simply, “How can that be profitable for Frito-Lay?” That line has stuck in the zeitgeist.

Daley: I remember the moment that we wrote that line. We were so excited about it.

Goldstein: It’s also so indicative of his character, because it’s entirely irrelevant to what’s going on.

Both of these films are ensemble movies. I imagine it was tricky to find actors with the right chemistry, and who could blend in multiple combinations.

Cannon: Now I feel like you have to package every comedy with A-listers from a list that is very tiny. But when we were casting Blockers, we could cast based on who fit the character the best. I cast the parents and then the kids, because, at that point, the script was more focused on the parents. I cast Leslie Mann first. I’ve known Ike for over 20 years, and it was really exciting being able to cast him in this role that I knew he would kill. And then John Cena had to audition for the role, because he wasn’t who he is now. I had seen John host the ESPYs, and when I saw him do his monologue, in that moment, I was like, He needs to be Mitchell. And so he came in, and John was just willing to do anything.

Daley: Did you have the opportunity to do a bunch of chemistry reads between the combinations of kids?

Cannon: I did, and it was really a vulnerable audition because there were a lot of conversations about when they lost their virginity, and some hadn’t lost their virginity when we were filming.

Daley: It was a long and complicated process casting Game Night. We had Jason Bateman on as a producer, and when we signed on we assumed, “Okay, he will play Max,” but then it became clear that wasn’t necessarily set in stone.

Goldstein: He was considering playing the Brooks (Kyle Chandler) role at first.

Daley: Or no role at all. Fortunately, he did come onboard, and then we got Rachel, and we were so excited about that because we could see the somewhat untapped comedic ability there. She was so funny in Mean Girls and then she hadn’t done a lot of comedy since then.

Goldstein: It gave us this starting point of two very skilled actors who could give us a relatable and real performance as a couple. The rest of it, we had to believe that these six people are friends. That’s some of the hardest things to do in casting: Are you going to buy that people of different ages and types would really hang out?

Daley: Sometimes we tailored a character to the actor after the fact. Billy Magnussen brings with him this unique, puppy-like energy, and so we tweaked that character so that it would fit more what he’s good at portraying. It was a lot of being really lucky in terms of who we were able to get, but also not totally knowing what the alchemy of all of it would be until we shot it.

Maybe most importantly, you found an incredible Denzel Washington impersonator.

Daley: The Denzel thing was a reshoot. Originally we find out that Michelle (Kylie Bunbury) slept with Glenn Close. There were no flashbacks, it was just this sort of like, “Huh,” and then we move on. And it just never got the laugh that we wanted it to. And then we were thinking, Man, Lamorne [Morris] mentions his fear that maybe she slept with Denzel,” and it’s like, “You think we could get Denzel?” No. “Well, what if we got an impersonator?” And the one that looked most like him actually lived in Atlanta, and so, when we went back out to reshoot, it was a perfect coincidence.

We used to be accustomed to our favorite comedies living with us forever, but that was in the DVD, VHS, cable era. Have you been surprised by the legs of these films?

Goldstein: Of course. You always hope that your work will last and make an impression, but we didn’t necessarily anticipate that would happen. There were moments during the filming where we felt like, This is as funny as anything we’d seen before. So you hoped people would agree.

Cannon: It’s so nice. I think it ebbs and flows because it’ll not be talked about, but then it’s on Netflix and then some more people find it. I do remember being on a plane, and maybe it was the only comedy offered on this long flight, and everybody was watching Blockers around me. And then sometimes, because of turbulence or whatever, it’ll freeze on what I call the “naked Marco Polo scene,” so it’s Gary Cole and Gina Gershon frozen naked.

Goldstein: Was that really his penis we were seeing?

Cannon: It was his penis.

Goldstein: Wow, that’s commitment, man.

Cannon: I asked if he wanted it not to be, and he was like, “No, I’m good.”

It feels like we’ve moved a bit away from the sequel-ification of comedies, but, naturally, when you have something successful, people want to run it back. Were sequels ever a real possibility in your minds?

Goldstein: A lot of our feeling is that it’s best to leave the audience wanting more. We cheated, because the end of Game Night sets up a sequel, with these other guys showing up in a van, and it’s like, “Uh-oh.” But that was self-aware, like, we’re not really doing that.

Daley: Although, we were talking about how Christmas movies are so special in their own way, and if you get one that really hits…like The Holdovers I see is now a Christmas movie that it’ll probably be on the list of Christmas movies that you would potentially rewatch every year. There is a Christmas Game Night that could work.

Cannon: I don’t know about you, Derek, I think I’m hearing from them that they are going to do a sequel.

They’re talking themselves into it.

Cannon: I think you should. But I get it, sequels are hard. If I’ve learned anything from [writing] Pitch Perfect, sequels are really hard. You have to make sure that you’re making it so that people are spending their money on something worth seeing. The first thought would be to reverse it, and have the kids try to block the parents from doing something. I don’t know, with the state of comedy, maybe I should just pitch it and do it! [Laughs.]

Goldstein: I like it. Or have you thought about Christmas Blockers?

Cannon: Yeah, we all know everybody really wants to fuck during Christmas.

How would you describe the state of the big-screen comedy? Is it possible to get another Blockers or Game Night?

Goldstein: The existence of streaming as an outlet has changed things fundamentally, because, in order to get the theatrical release and the marketing money that that requires, studios have to feel pretty confident that they can launch something on the big screen. And so I think what you see is less straight-ahead comedy going to theaters and more funny genre movies, because they feel like it’s got some IP behind it or can put some big stars in it.

Daley: It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. The fact that Apple and Amazon are just willing to sink a lot of money into all types of genres is great, because it does allow for more comedies to get made. But comedies themselves are a medium that work best in a theater.

Cannon: I think the pendulum will switch again. I do think that you have to make a great comedy that is incredibly relatable. People want to laugh together, but the stuff that’s been offered has been a little bit hit or miss. I think that the challenge for people like us is to convince the buyers and the business folks and the distributors that what I’m pitching to you is something I know can be great. And there’s just not a willingness to trust in the artists, because they’re business people and they’re just looking at numbers.

Daley: It does seem like people are appreciating less cynicism in films in general, but especially in comedic films. I remember there was a run there of truly funny movies that were also kind of hateful. Maybe it’s the times that we’re in, but people kind of long for some element of heart and earnestness. That’s what we tried to do with Dungeons.

Goldstein: It’s what [Steven Spielberg’s production company] Amblin routinely did in the ’80s, and we seem to have gone away from that to a place where shock value was the thing for a while—like, “How far can we push into the R?”

Daley: Judd did such an amazing job with 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up with these characters that you’re truly rooting for and you love, but also having raunch. Then I think there were a lot of people emulating that, but it didn’t actually have the heart. That’s when the audiences started to turn on comedies.

We’re talking a few days before the Oscars. Out of curiosity, I went to see the best-picture nominations for your year.

Goldstein: Were the Golden Globes doing the comedy category back then? Was that The Martian year?

Cannon: I remember being pissed about Blockers not being even considered for comedy at the Golden Globes. I know A Star Is Born was that year.

Goldstein: Why is musical and comedy grouped together?

The funniest thing is that A Star Is Born was actually nominated in drama. The hilarious Green Book was the best comedy of that year.

Goldstein: Come on, kill me.