Stonewall Gets What It Deserves, Tanks at the Box Office

It turns out that hundreds of reviews trashing Stonewall, Roland Emmerich’s wildly misguided, whitewashed parody of the Stonewall Riots of ‘69, were effective in their goal of steering weekend moviegoers in literally any other possible direction.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the latest outing from the director of bombastic, wildly successful box office fare such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow grossed a truly miserable $112,414 from 127 theaters for an location average of $871. That’s a wicked bomb, especially for a project whose architect was explicit in his desire to make a story central to LGBTQ rights accessible to the cis white masses.

Spake Emmerich to Buzzfeed:

“You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people. I kind of found out, in the testing process, that actually, for straight people, [Danny] is a very easy in. Danny’s very straight-acting. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”

Oof. Well, Roland, it would seem that the people who buy tickets felt pretty much zip for Danny goddamn Winters, maybe because, oh yeah, he has absolutely zero stake in the history of systemic violence against LGBTQ people because you. made. him. up.

Meanwhile, Nancy Meyers’ The Intern, a 5 hour tour de force tracing impoverished milkmaid Anne Hathaway’s forbidden love affair with Vietnam War veteran Robert Di Niro, made $18.2 million, largely due to Meyers’ ongoing obsession with the destitute underclass and full frontal male nudity. Happy Sunday!