From a supposed feud between cast members to Harry Styles spitting on Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival, the movie “Don’t Worry Darling” had a scandalous entrance into the public eye.
In April 2020, the news broke that actor and director Olivia Wilde had an upcoming film with Florence Pugh as the lead and Shia LaBeouf, Chris Pine and Wilde set to join her. It all went downhill from there.
Between scandals and drama, the thriller premiered on Sept. 23, and against all odds, made up for the internet turmoil in profits just from opening weekend. So, to understand how such a disaster of a movie was able to succeed with this much bad press, we must dive into the gossip, reviews and opinions surrounding it.
The Drama Rundown
After the movie was first announced, the following two years were filled with scandals and drama.
It started with LaBeouf leaving (or being fired; it’s still being debated) the cast. The media called it a “scheduling conflict,” and popstar Harry Styles replaced him as Pugh’s co-star. A month after Styles joins the cast, Wilde breaks up her nine-year-long relationship with Jason Suidekis, and two months later, Wilde and Styles start officially dating.
In close relation to that scandal, inside sources told media that there was “tension” on set between Pugh and Wilde. Speculation said that Pugh was upset with Wilde because she was so infatuated with her new romance, she neglected her directorial duties. This hidden feud between them was further supported by Pugh’s lack of promotion of the film and some resurfaced texts and video between Wilde and LaBeouf where Wilde refers to her as “Miss Flo.” These suggested that the two had animosity toward each other even before filming started.
Finally, the latest addition to the parade of terrible press was the infamous Spitgate. This was a set of theories developed after a video of Styles walking to his seat next to Chris Pine at the Venice premiere of the film went viral. In the video, as Styles sits down, it kind of looks like he spits on Pine. The speculations were both addressed by Pine’s team, who said that Styles did not spit on him, and briefly by Styles, who joked on stage at the Madison Square Garden that he “popped over to Venice to spit on Chris Pine.”
Not surprisingly at all, most of this drama has been dismissed. Wilde has done multiple interviews for magazines and newspapers where she explains in detail the issues with LaBeouf and assures there is no bad blood between her and Pugh. Multiple cast members have also come forward and confirmed that the environment on set was nothing but comfortable and full of talent and support. Neither Pugh nor Styles have directly addressed any of the controversy, other than side comments like Styles’ joke at his concert.
The Abysmal Reviews
As soon as “Don’t Worry Darling” was first shown at the Venice Film Festival and the early screenings started, the reviews didn’t help its case.
With a 38% critics’ score from Rotten Tomatoes, a B- CinemaScore and a 3.2 rating on Letterboxd, reviews call the movie everything from “too ambitious” to “boring and repetitive.” Richard Roeper from the Chicago Sun-Times called it “A cheap parlor trick” and Andrea Chase from Killer Movie Reviews described it as “A challenging, visually arresting film that can’t quite support the weight of its intent.”
A common criticism across all the reviews is the themes of the movie – fighting a patriarchal society, the control that men have over women, etc. – have been told a thousand times before, and in better ways. The film focuses too much on aesthetics and singular scenes than on connecting them to the main plot. It also has a predictable twist and an ending that leaves too much unanswered and a bad taste in your mouth. Another flaw almost every critic agrees with is Harry Styles, who is not a terrible actor for his first leading role, was not the right person to play such a complex character and carry along the storyline.
The Numbers That Matter
But drama and reviews aside, the numbers that hold weight, money, turned out to be positive for this movie.
From opening day and Thursday previews, Variety reports the film made $9.4 million. “Don’t Worry Darling” was predicted to earn around $20 million to $21 million in opening weekend, but it got $19 million from North America alone plus an extra $10.8 million internationally, totaling $30 million, according to The Economic Times. This is particularly impressive when we consider its modest production budget of $35 million.
To put those numbers in context, it’s worth noting that “Avatar: The Way of Water” bagged a similar $30.5 million worldwide, and its predecessor, 2009’s “Avatar,” is the highest-grossing movie in history.
The Reason Why
Although the press was appalling, the movie was not bad, and it had secured an audience far before its release. On the contrary to the idea that bad publicity can destroy something, bad publicity is still publicity, and the drama surrounding this movie only made it more famous.
The reason behind all the discussion and gossip falls on the cast and promotion of the movie. Pugh attracts audiences because she is an Oscar-winning actress and a moving force for any project she is in, Styles is a world-famous popstar with a dedicated fan base, and Wilde brought her own personal drama into the set of a movie with a breakup, a new relationship, and a custody case. While these caused a long string of issues, they also secured viewers and attention and, therefore, were the reason that the film grossed such good numbers.
In the end, it doesn’t matter that reviews were horrifying, and that half of the world thought Harry Styles was a spitter. The bad publicity made the film a hit and made its cast and director as famous as they have ever been. And who knows, perhaps if there hadn’t been so much drama around it, it would have failed on its opening night, and we wouldn’t even be talking about it right now.