Clint Eastwood Got Screwed Over

"Juror #2" is a perfect movie to see at 1 p.m. on a Saturday. It's almost impossible to do so.

Just a few weeks ago, I was at a work dinner (humblebrag intended) when a coworker asked me why I would possibly want to live in New York City. It’s a question I get a lot and he said something to this extent: “I don’t understand why people would live there and spend all their money on rent with so little room to live in.”

I understand the complaint—I’ve heard it many times—and yet, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I’m personally not a fan of sitting in traffic, cul-de-sacs that feed directly into highways, a complete lack of culture and an inability to walk over to see friends, but maybe that’s just me. You do you.

Anyway, a big reason to live here is that at basically any time, I can find my way to a theater showing new movies, old movies, a showing of Cats followed by a drag-queen brunch and everything in between. As Jaboukie Young-White once ingeniously tweeted, “‘i moved out of the city and im so much happier’ love that for you but i need see a 1970s arthouse film at 2:30pm on a wednesday in theater with 15 unemployed strangers or i will die.”

Just around the corner are countless AMCs and Regals, multiple Alamo Drafthouses, the Angelika, the Village East, the Film Forum, the Museum of the Moving Image, the IFC Center, the Paris Theater, BAM Cinema, the Quad Cinema, LOOK Dine-in Cinemas and many many more. And yet … it’s nearly impossible to see the new Clint Eastwood-directed middle-of-the-road legal thriller starring Nicholas Hoult, Zoey Deutch, Toni Collette, Chris Messina and Kiefer Sutherland.

The movie, Juror #2 is ultimately pretty good. It feels like it time-traveled from the mid-1990s when courtroom dramas were all the rage and there was still a recognizable good and evil that didn’t center on red baseball caps. It could easily be shown right now on TNT over 2.5 hours with commercials, and you would simply say, “Hey, this is solid.”

One would think that an Eastwood-directed murder(?)-mystery would do numbers, especially with senior citizens and yet it only has a few showtimes around three theaters in New York City. This is almost unheard of for smaller indie films, let alone an Eastwood nail-biter with a $35 million budget.

My packed theater was mostly made up of AARP members and New Yorkers who still pay with a MetroCard, but what else is a showing at 1 pm on a Saturday for? Geriatrics across the five boroughs should be able to watch Juror #2 and then go get a late lunch/early dinner and discuss their thoughts.

To put it simply, Juror #2 is playing across less than 50 (!) theaters across the United States for one reason and one: Clint Eastwood got screwed over and ultimately betrayed by Warner Bros. Discovery.

Just in the last 10 years, Eastwood has directed Jersey Boys, American Sniper, Sully, The 15:17 to Paris, The Mule, Richard Jewell and Cry Macho. Some were bonafide hits like Oscar-winner American Sniper, awards favorites like Richard Jewell and Sully and a bonkers bonafide hit in which a 90-year-old horticulturist-turned-drug-courier played by Clint Eastwood has two threesomes in The Mule. His recent “failure” Cry Macho underperformed grossing $16 million against a $33 million budget, but it was also hurt by a simultaneous 31-day release on HBO Max at the tail-end of peak pandemic times.

As retribution for the Cry Macho disappointment, David Zaslav and WBD appear to have buried what could be Eastwood’s final movie, giving it a handful of showtimes across the United States despite making over $10 million overseas. The Ringer’s review of Juror #2 says as much, and it feels more like a vendetta than anything else.

In 2022, a Wall Street Journal profile of the company’s then-incoming CEO, David Zaslav, revealed that the (in)famously blunt executive had laid into his staff for green-lighting Eastwood’s tender Western Cry Macho, which earned just over $10 million on a $30 million budget.

Supposedly, after being met with rhetoric about Eastwood’s legendary status and nearly 50-year relationship with Warners, Zaslav pulled out a quote from Jerry Maguire—one, it should be said, that was spoken not by Tom Cruise’s idealistic hero, but the movie’s obnoxious corporate stooge of a villain: “It’s not show friends; it’s show business.” —Adam Nayman

This move is a microcosm of an industry that’s becoming more and more hostile to its artists with Zaslav (yes, him again) shelving movies for tax cuts after they were completed such as Batgirl or Coyote vs. Acme, rival competitors like Netflix eschewing a theatrical model so as to hurt brick-and-mortar revenue and many (WAY TOO MANY) studios bankrolling AI in order to push human beings out of business and make a quick buck even if it destroys lives and the environment.

The funniest thing (well, maybe not haha funny) is that there’s a very recognizable world in which Juror #2 is a hit. Maybe not to Avengers: Endgame levels—there are admittedly few Infinity Stones in Eastwood’s oeuvre—but a middle-of-the-road legal thriller made for just over $30 million from a famous director with a nice mix of young and old stars produced by a major studio would’ve until just recently made a nice profit. Ten years ago, reasonably similarly-sized projects like American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Her, Nebraska and Philomena were all nominated for Best Picture and made a pretty penny in theaters. It’s a shame that Eastwood and Juror #2 were robbed of that chance. It might even get into Best Picture now as a “fuck you” to WBD, which is an idea I’ve seen swirling around. It admittedly has 100-1 odds on GoldDerby, but don’t let anyone tell you that people in the entertainment business aren’t vindictive. One out of every three media stories is centered on one company trying to screw over another.

Now, don’t feel too bad for Eastwood. The man has won four Academy Awards, directed 40 films and even served as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, but it’s the principle of the thing here.

Eastwood made a solid movie that got pushed into and then out of theaters because of vendettas, bad business ethics, to push a floundering streaming service and because those in charge seemingly don’t want to make money one way in favor of a more confounding and evil way to make money.

Clint Eastwood has been in movies for longer than I’ve been alive and then some, so he’ll be just fine. The thing that troubles me the most though is that if the head honchos can screw over Hollywood royalty and one of the most celebrated names in the business at the drop of a hat, just think about what they can do to everyone else.