by Emma Svoboda
In recent years, it seems to have become common for press tours for movies and TV shows to be riddled with drama and relationships between co-stars that send social media into a frenzy. It presents the question: how much truth is there to “all press is good press”?
The most popular recent example of this is the press tour for Emerald Fennel’s movie adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. The movie was released on February 13, and the internet has many opinions on the costume design, casting, and most prominently the odd relationship between co-stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Posts using quotes from the press tour have received floods of comments about Margot Robbie’s marriage and how uncomfortable the interviews and trailers have made them. Many people have pointed out that Robbie is married, with most of these comments receiving responses that her husband worked on the film as an executive producer. It’s also been pointed out that Elordi is in a long-term on-and-off relationship.
While this has brought the film to the public eye more than it would have been otherwise, it seems to have turned a group of potential viewers off from it. Many are unaware that this could be the strategy of the movie’s press tour instead of a legitimate strange air between co-stars, or they’re aware of the nature of the comments and still find it to be strange, also turning them away from the film. Besides this, there are many people upset by the casting, pointing out that the characters are meant to be younger than the actors. Backlash has also come from Elordi playing Heathcliff, whitewashing the character.
Something similar to this happened with the 2023 romcom Anyone But You, starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Rumors started spreading about the co-stars based on their behavior during the press tour. Sweeney was also engaged at the time, and her fiancé was an executive producer on the film. Powell, however, split from his long-time girlfriend while the rumors began to float around.
Both films have seen rumors of romance between big-name stars that stirred up a great deal of attention. Wuthering Heights currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 65% and Anyone But You has a score of 53%. What I think people fail to realize is there’s a difference between good press and effective press. The strategy used with these two films was successful in drawing attention, but possibly led audiences to not respond as positively as typically hoped for.
