‘Where The Crawdads Sing’ Is This Summer’s First Big Movie For Women

In encouraging news for the weekend, Sony reported that Where the Crawdads Sing (produced by Reese Witherspoon and with a new song from Taylor Swift) earned $2.3 million on Thursday. Either the film, based on Delia Owens’ extremely popular (12 million copies sold) novel is seriously frontloaded, especially for a non-sequel, non-geek-centric movie, or we may be looking at a $20 million-plus debut. The Sony/3000 Pictures release, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as a young woman who grows up alone in a marsh after her mother and siblings flee from their abusive, alcoholic patriarch, cost around $24 million to produce. Even a $15 million debut would be a win. However, the Olivia Newman-directed and Lucy Alibar-penned adaptation is the first mainstream wide release for adult women since Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum’s The Lost City in late March.

As a movie, Where the Crawdads Sing is shockingly straightforward. While well-acted by a game cast, including Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson as two-thirds of a cinematic love triangle, the film seems (intentionally perhaps) sanded off a bit. It deals with grim subject matter (parental abuse, poverty, racism, bigotry, toxic masculinity, etc.) without ever truly dipping into “feel bad movie” territory. A colleague of mine mentioned The Shawshank Redemption and, apples and oranges perhaps, he’s right. Both are seemingly grim movies filled with difficult moments that nonetheless play like feel-good crowdpleasers (including, in this case, its heroine being supernaturally beautiful no matter the social/economic circumstances). While that’s one of Crawdads’ issues as a movie, it may well be a commercial advantage for audiences not wanting an un-fun time at the movies.

Moreover, it’s shocking just how male-driven the cinemas became this summer. Where the Crawdads Sing is “it” for big female-fronted flicks. It hasn’t been this bad since the summer of 2013 when Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy’s The Heat was the only game in town alongside Iron Man 3, Star Trek into Darkness, Fast and Furious 6, Man of Steel, The Lone Ranger and White House Down. Even the toons were Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 (a rom-com that damseled its female co-star), while The Mortal Instruments crawled into theaters in mid-August. Since then, partially because studios saw the value of diversifying blockbusters, we have the semi-regular likes of (among others) The Fault in Our Stars in 2014, Pitch Perfect 2 in 2015, Ghostbusters in 2016, Wonder Woman in 2017, Mamma Mia 2 in 2018 and so forth.

Part of this is Covid-caused, as quite a few of the films that ended up at a streamer (Mulan, The Happiest Season, The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, etc.) in 2020 and 2021 were indeed female-fronted biggies. Without getting conspiratorial, most of the huge movies that were held until theaters could safely play them were the “white guy’s journey” likes of No Time to Die, The Batman, Top Gun: Maverick, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Summer 2021 wasn’t swimming in “white lady”-centric releases, all due respect to Black Widow, A Quiet Place part II and Cruella). However, it was occupied mainly by minority-led films like Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, Spiral, F9, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, In the Heights, Snake Eyes, Candyman and Jungle Cruise.

It doesn’t help that many of the bigger female-led hits (like almost anything that isn’t a YA fantasy flick, horror movie or a DC/Marvel superhero film) is now considered “not worthy of theatrical” in the eyes of both the studios and the audiences. The “next” Lucy” or the “next Trainwreck” would likely end up on Netflix or Peacock. However, The Lost City has earned $190 million worldwide, while Lady Gaga’s House of Gucci earned $155 million global as every other studio programmer was dying in late 2021. Everything Everywhere All at Once was a sleeper smash ($67 million domestic) both because of Asian audiences and because of audiences of all demos who relished a high-quality mother/daughter fantasy melodrama that happened to star Michelle Yeoh. Turning Red couldn’t have performed much worse than Lightyear.

I may have to eat my words tomorrow morning. Nonetheless, Where the Crawdads Sing (barely) works and will presumably play well to those who have enjoyed the novel. It’s the first big-deal theatrical release of summer 2022 that’s unquestionably aimed at women, which makes it a demographically specific event film. Yes, it’s disconcerting that 50% of the population is considered a niche demographic, but that’s the culture we’ve built for ourselves. I fear that Covid may have eradicated much of the progress which was being made in terms of parity. It joins The 355, Marry Me, Scream, The Lost City and Everything Everywhere All at Once among the few big theatrical releases this year whose top-billed star(s) isn’t a dude. That I nearly can count such things on one hand is not encouraging.