Anti-White Hate Film “Birth of a Nation” Flops
The anti-White hate film Birth of a Nation – which the New York Times predicted would fuel race war – has officially flopped.
They are framing this as “oh, well, people didn’t want to see it because he’s a gang-rapist.” But I doubt many people were thinking about that. Everyone still goes and watches Roman Polanski’s movies, and that Jew anally raped a 13-year-old.
No, I think White people are just sick of paying money to be told how evil they are. That is part of the Trump Effect.
“The Birth of a Nation” flopped at the box office this weekend, cementing its place among the steepest falls from grace in recent Hollywood history.
The biopic about slave rebellion leader Nat Turner was thought to have the makings of a commercial and critical hit when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Ten months later, it opened to an estimated $7.1 million in sixth place with its awards prospects severely hampered, even though it played in more than 2,100 locations, an unusually wide rollout for a low-budget film.
Renewed scrutiny of rape allegations leveled against its director and star, Nate Parker, have completely overwhelmed the movie’s release and sparked public debates about whether seeing the movie was a tacit endorsement of its creator.
Mr. Parker was acquitted of the charges, made in 1999 while he was a student at Penn State University. His representatives didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment.
The box-office performance of “The Birth of a Nation” caps a monthslong problem for its studio, Fox Searchlight, the specialty label of Twentieth Century Fox. (21st Century Fox, which owns the studio, and News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, share common ownership.)
Fox Searchlight paid $17.5 million to distribute the movie, a Sundance record. It was an eye-popping amount, but anyone who attended the “Birth” premiere could see why the bids came in so high.
The movie opened to multiple standing ovations in an auditorium packed with Mr. Parker’s supporters. Less than two weeks earlier, nominations for the Academy Awards had been announced and no nonwhite actor was given a nod, leading to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.
Here was a movie featuring a predominantly black cast about a seminal moment in American history. Fox Searchlight had taken home best-picture Oscars the previous two years for “Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave.” The stage seemed set for “Birth” to coast from Sundance to the Oscars podium, and launch a national conversation about violence against the black community.
But in a sign of how quickly a movie’s narrative can spin out of a studio’s control, Mr. Parker became a liability for his own film. He gave defiant interviews about the rape allegations, but reports that his accuser had committed suicide in 2012 cast an even darker pall on the movie. Public outcry led to some calling for protests of the film.
Fox Searchlight pivoted to a micro-targeted campaign that included outreach to schools and African-American churches. The opening-weekend audience was about 51% African-American and 53% women, said Frank Rodriguez, a senior vice president at Fox Searchlight.
Mr. Rodriguez said he couldn’t tell how much Mr. Parker’s personal controversy weighed on the weekend’s results, but said no movie theater yanked the film from screens as a result. “I didn’t have one exhibitor pull back or question us,” he said. He’s encouraged that moviegoers this weekend gave it an “A” grade, according to the CinemaScore market research firm.
There is no clear career blueprint for Mr. Parker to follow from here. Previous personal controversies in Hollywood have led to near-banishment, which was the case with Mel Gibson after the actor made sexist and anti-Semitic remarks to officers arresting him for driving under the influence in 2006.
They could have made more by just re-releasing the original Birth of a Nation.
Read the rest over at The Daily Stormer.
