The biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere hit cinemas on October 24. Box office results were underwhelming. On its opening weekend, Deliver Me from Nowhere earned $9.1 million, trailing behind Black Phone 2 and a romcom called Regretting You.
I love horror. But if a horror film is beating your movie, there is most likely a problem somewhere.
Conservative media sources are blaming Springsteen’s (leftwing, of course) political activism in recent election cycles. But leftwing politics have seldom hurt mainstream celebrities.
Celebrities, after all, are the kids who decide to be “different” by slavishly imitating all their “different” peers. As you may remember from your high school years, the artsy kids are more conformist than the jocks and the cheerleaders. They’re just conformist in a different way.
And this is especially true of Baby Boomer celebrities. Among that crowd, it is always 1968. Did anyone ever expect Springsteen to be a conservative? Come on: there is no surprise here.
I was in high school in 1984, when Born in the USA was voted the Year’s Best Album, and on its way to becoming one of the bestselling albums of all time.
Everyone who came out of the 1980s likes at least one song from that album. My personal favorite was “Glory Days”. That song evokes a sense of nostalgia that appealed to me even at the age of seventeen. (I began my nostalgic phase very early in life.)
But even in the mid-1980s, Bruce Springsteen was widely considered to be an act from the 1970s. As a high school kid in the 1980s, I couldn’t remember the release of his 1975 breakout hit, “Born to Run”.
Which raises the question: who, exactly, is the target audience for this movie? Most of my fellow Gen Xers would be more eager to see a movie about a musical act more solidly grounded in the 1980s. (Hint to the film industry: now would be a really great time for a biopic about AC/DC, Def Leppard, Journey, or Rush.)
Millennials and Zoomers, meanwhile, are not going to rush to the cinema to see a movie about a musician of their grandparents’ generation. It’s hard enough to coax Millennials and Zoomers into the cinema as it is. Millennials are notoriously cheap, and Zoomers are afraid to leave the house.
That leaves the Baby Boomer generation. How many Americans between the ages of 65 and 80 are going to rush to the cinema for Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere?
And then there is the length: 1 hour, 59 minutes. Nowadays, most movies are around 90 minutes in length. This is the age of short attention spans.
So is there an appetite for a 2-hour movie about Bruce Springsteen in 2025? Maybe, but I’m not sure who would have such a yearning.
-ET