How a Bad Rotten Tomatoes Score Can Kill a Director's Career

It's getting easier and easier to fall into “movie prison” for filmmakers in Hollywood.

In November 2022, Martin Scorsese denounced “the disgusting spectacle offered by Rotten Tomatoes” through a tribute to the famous film critic Roger Ebert. Having become the alpha and omega of Hollywood, the review aggregator is considered a threat by certain creators. Notably because it is very detrimental to polarizing works, consequently harming risk-taking. Conversely, it favors consensual films.

A recent example? Babylon by Damien Chazelle, who displays a measly 57% positive reviews on the site. We could also cite A Day in Hell, Aquatic life, Man of Steel, Blade II or Taken, Mars Attacks, Jumanji And Brothers in spite of themselves. So many films which have a score below 60% and have inherited the now famous rotten tomato which can literally kill the career of a film, and of its director.

Last March, Damien Chazelle explained that he feared not being able to finance his new film.

“It is certain that from a financial point of view, Babylon did not work at all. Who knows. Maybe I won't be able to make this film. I do not know. We'll see how it goes.”

In a major paper published a week ago, The Hollywood Reporter looked into the question. The observation is there: it is increasingly easy for a director to switch today to the movie jail : this virtual prison where we place filmmakers who have had one flop too many. Big names can go through this, like Francis Ford Coppola who had to invest his personal fortune to finance his new film, Megalopolisin competition at Cannes.

Here again, the strike in Hollywood caused damage: “We came back from the strike and found a different industry“, confided a manager to the THR. “Momentum has been lost, everything has come under scrutiny and everyone has a new boss“.

In this extremely cautious context, the Rotten Tomatoes rating is therefore added to the box office ax to determine whether a film can be entrusted to a director. A particularly perverse effect when we know the limits of this score.

“Critical praise has become a game“, explains the representative of a director at THR. “The Rotten Tomatoes score is the first thing people look at when I sell them a director. The decision to hire a director is inevitably affected.”

The threat of “cinema prison” is even greater for women directors and filmmakers of color. Others seem spared from this sanction, like veteran Robert Zemeckis, who has suffered a string of failures in recent years but retains the confidence of the studios. His secret? Being able to put Tom Hanks in the lead, as will be the case for his next film, Herewhich will be released in November…