Bros

Why did Bros bomb? The paltry $4.8 million opening weekend of the “first gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast” — quite the mouthful — was as predictable as its fawning critical response (88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes). The film also cost $22 million to produce, not including its marketing budget, which somehow failed to publicize the fact that this is a rom-com from Judd Apatow. When the film’s lead, Billy Eichner, announced that Bros flopped because straight people “just didn’t show up,” he was right — but it wasn’t just straight men; it was women who seemed as excited for Bros as they were the next sweaty and dim Rambo movie. Also, who titled this film? What was the logic?

Something happened in American society between the release of Bros last weekend and 2018, when Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic of gay, HIV-positive Queen front man Freddie Mercury, grossed $900 million at the box office. Comedian Billy Eichner’s gay romcom barely eked out a pathetic $4.8 million on opening night, around the same amount that Ellen "Elliot" Page spent on flannel shirts and Groucho Marx glasses last year. Why the disparity in box office takings? Well, American moviegoers became deeply homophobic. That’s according to Eichner himself, who wrote on Twitter following the paltry opening weekend numbers, “That’s just the world we live in, unfortunately.