Don’t Worry Darling, it’s just Beef

If even a scrap of the drama the mystery thriller, Don’t Worry Darling, stirred up during its release window was present within the film itself, we’d have a blockbuster on our hands. Unfortunately for us, it stayed strictly within the realm of the gossip rags and this column.

It had controversy after controversy which kept it planted front and centre of its target demo at all times, who primarily turned out to go see Harry Styles drag himself limply across the set. First there was a stouch between director Olivia Wilde and one of its leads, Shia LaBeouf, who left the project. Then there was tension again with Wilde and Florence Pugh, leading to what many believe was a notable absence of Pugh from most of the press tour for her own movie. There were explanations that it was actually due to scheduling conflicts with her work in Dune: Part Two. If you want me to be on board with anything, just give me the excuse that it’s because of Dune: Part Two. Cancel entire other movies, forget to pick me at the airport, whatever it takes to get Dune done.

The fallout even reached as far as Jordan Peterson. Olivia Wilde said that the antagonist of the film was based on Peterson, who she dubbed the “pseudo-intellectual hero for the incel movement.”
“I thought the marginalised were supposed to have a voice,” Peterson said in an interview, tearing up in a Peterson-ish type way, making him the most sympathetic person in this story.

So what did all this do for its numbers? The film itself earned 6.3 on IMDB and 38% on Rotten Tomatoes. But that didn’t stop it from earning a cool $78.9 million, at time of writing, on the back of a $35 million budget. It outdid forecasts for its opening weekend, topping the box office at #1 and in the UK and Ireland it became the widest-ever opener by a female director, which I guess makes me wish more people turned out to go see Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.