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Why ‘mother!’ Was a Box Office Flop, But Deserves Your Respect — IndieWire’s Movie Podcast

Plus: Why the latest foreign language Oscar submissions might be frontrunners in the category.
Screen Talk 166: Why Darren Aronofsky's 'mother!' Was a Flop
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One of the most anticipated fall season movies was Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!”, and many of the critics who saw it at the earliest screenings on the festival circuit confirmed that it was worth the wait: Aronofsky’s boundary-pushing allegorical horror movie is in a class all to its own. It’s the kind of exciting cinema that many diehard moviegoers wait all year to see. So why didn’t more people see it?

“mother!” opened in third place on opening weekend, and shows no signs of gathering steam. What went wrong here — and what does it tell us about the state of studio-produced filmmaking today?

That’s the starting point for this week’s episode of Screen Talk, as Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson discuss Paramount’s strategy for the film and Aronofsky’s role in its marketing. They also touch on several foreign language Oscar submissions and two major films opening this week. Listen to the full podcast below.

Screen Talk is available on iTunes.

You can subscribe here or via RSS. Share your feedback with Thompson and Kohn on Twitter or sound off in the comments. Browse previous installments here, review the show on  and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk. Check out the rest of IndieWire’s podcasts on iTunes right here.

This episode is sponsored by “God Knows Where I Am.” For more information, visit the site for the film.

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