Will Smith used to be a dependable hitmaker. Bad Boys, Independence Day, Men in Black, Hitch - it was one monster success after another.
Recent years have been more of a roller-coaster for the A-lister, from his massive bomb After Earth in 2013 to the failed awards bid of Concussion a few years later.
In 2016, Smith headlined Suicide Squad, which more than made back its budget but was savaged by critics and no box office match for superhero competition at Marvel.
For Smith, an unqualified knockout is long overdue. The two-time Oscar nominee still has the boyish charm - the big grin and goofy ears - plus, he knows how to land a solid one-liner.
And he’s trying to reclaim his place at the top, most recently with Netflix’s big-budget fantasy thriller, Bright, which started streaming last week.
Only one question remains:
Is Bright a hit? The answer is
complicated.
Measuring a film’s success used to be relatively straightforward. There wasn’t just one metric; some combination of variables determined what constituted a “hit” or a “miss”.
A movie could be popular with critics and audiences, it could have awards potential, or it could have mass commercial appeal, based on big box office returns. Sometimes, as with American Sniper, it might have all four.
With more than 109 million subscribers, Netflix doesn’t have to worry about box office returns, which is why the company rarely releases its original movies in theatres, unless it’s trying to qualify for Oscars glory.
That’s why Mudbound ended up on big screens the same weekend it began streaming. But a lack of theatrical releases also means no Cinema Score-type audience grades.
Meanwhile, Netflix doesn’t release viewership data - even if it’s probably keeping a close eye on the size of an audience for a movie that cost $90 million (R1.1billion) to make.
“In the case of Netflix, they have so much money anyway, it’s not about box office. It’s about the perception of them as a provider of new and innovative content, including big-budget theatrical-style films,” said comScore’s Paul Dergarabedian, who has been tracking box office numbers for 25 years.
It looks as if we need to find a new method for figuring out which movies are worth seeing. Netflix and other streaming services have changed the rules in entertainment and this is just another way they’re making creators and consumers reassess the status quo.
Some Hollywood power players don’t seem to mind. During the Vanity Fair Summit in Beverly Hills in October, director Ava DuVernay, who worked with Netflix on her Oscar-nominated documentary The 13th, said she didn’t miss the measurement of box office returns.
“I get a vibe,” she said. “I can feel the energy rolling in. It’s not hard numbers, but it is a general idea of how things go. I don’t need numbers to know.”
So how’s Bright’s vibe? It depends who you ask. We already know what critics think, and it hasn’t been good.
Some have called the movie, directed by Suicide Squad helmer David Ayer, a retread of Alien Nation. Some have called it the worst movie of the year.
But that seems a touch hyperbolic considering that 2017 also spewed forth Transformers: The Last Night, Flatliners and The Snowman. None of them bright.