The Greatest Cult Classic of the Last Five Years Is Gate-Crashing a New Streaming Home

The Greatest Cult Classic of the Last Five Years Is Gate-Crashing a New Streaming Home Image via Paramount Pictures By  Rahul Malhotra Published 33 minutes ago Rahul Malhotra is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has been writing for Collider for over two years, and has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal to introduce audiences to a whole new world of cinema. 

Swing and a miss > measured victory. Also, #JusticeForHan. (He/Him). Sign in to your Collider account follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap

The appetite for exuberant three-hour-long excursions into a filmmaker's mind has grown in the last few years, with movies such as Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon and Brady Corbet's The Brutalist doing exceedingly well with critics and during awards season. But, in 2022, director Damien Chazelle's gloriously deranged Babylon not only flopped with the audiences, it also divided critics right down the middle. The Oscar-winning wunderkind director of Whiplash and La La Land was coming off a flop — the similarly underappreciated First Man — and the failure of Babylon certainly disrupted his progress. But in the years since the film's release, it has cultivated a vocal group of fans. This group will only grow, especially after the film debuts on Netflix this December.

Babylon traces the origins of the film industry known as Hollywood through the perspectives of three characters — a rank outsider played by newcomer Diego Calva, a starlet played by Margot Robbie, and a veteran played by Brad Pitt. The sprawling, three-hour-long epic features a string of set pieces that will surely go down in movie history among the greatest, but its maximalist tone and daring swing-for-the-fences attitude earned mixed reactions from audiences. Produced on a reported budget of $80 million, Babylon grossed only around $65 million at the worldwide box office, supposedly losing Paramount nearly $90 million.

Reviews were also mixed; the movie is now sitting at a 57% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus reads, "Babylon's overwhelming muchness is exhausting, but much like the industry it honors, its well-acted, well-crafted glitz and glamour can often be an effective distraction." The movie went on to earn three Academy Award nods, and has only grown in stature in the years since. Appearing on the Talking Pictures podcast last year, Robbie alluded to the film's growing cult fandom, and said, "I love it. I don’t get it either. I know I am biased because I am very close to the project and I obviously believe in it, but I still can’t figure out why people hated it. I wonder if in 20 years people are going to be like, ‘Wait, Babylon didn’t do well at the time?’ Like when you hear that Shawshank Redemption was a failure at the time and you’re like, ‘How is that possible?'”

Paramount Is Staying in the Damien Chazelle Business

Chazelle is now juggling a couple of projects at Paramount. The first is said to be an unconventional biopic of the stunt performer Evel Knievel, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Adrien Brody attached, and the second is a prison drama that had Daniel Craig and Cillian Murphy circling. He's also producing the Brad Pitt-led film Heart of the Beast. You can watch Babylon on Netflix beginning December 7, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

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Babylon

Like Follow Followed r Drama Comedy History Release Date December 23, 2022 Runtime 189minutes Director Damien Chazelle Writers Damien Chazelle

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• Brad Pitt
• Margot Robbie

Genres Drama, Comedy, History Powered by Expand Collapse

• Movie News
• Babylon
• Damien Chazelle

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