James Gray Calls Box Office-Obsessed Moviegoers Capitalist “Lemmings”: “Do You Own Stock In Comcast?”

While theaters are still recovering from the pandemic directly impacting attendance and box office outcomes, there are still really great movies struggling to find audiences outside of streaming and VOD options when they are released in theaters. Some smaller to mid-range pictures, mainly horror, have done better than expected in the shadow of the $100-200 million-dollar budgeted blockbusters that seemingly come out round-year now.

Director James Gray, who was behind the autobiographic film “Armageddon Time” is now reflecting on the film’s box office after it only managed to earn $5.6 million globally and how some film fans are seemingly more interested in the financial gains of the film, rather than the artistic merits or entertainment value of them. During a chat with GQ, the filmmaker compared these types of moviegoers to “lemmings” and questioned why they were so obsessed with what a corporation was profiting from the situation. Something that has long been expected for massively expensive projects, but less focus is usually placed on smaller pictures hoping to get awards attention rather than making big coin for a studio.

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“Commercially, the movie was a failure,” Gray told GQ. “But so is everything. I mean, I know that’s not true. ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ is not. But you’re now in a situation where literally every single one of these movies is not doing well, and in some ways, that’s the great equalizer.”

He added, “But you also know as a film person that has absolutely no bearing on the long-term reaction to a film. I’m a film person, and I have no idea what the box office receipts were of, you know, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ or something. So I try to divorce myself from that as well. Because I can’t do anything about it.”

“It tells you something of how indoctrinated we are with capitalism that somebody will say, like, ‘His movies haven’t made a dime!’” Gray said of moviegoers only focused on box office earnings. “It’s like, well, do you own stock in Comcast? Or are you just such a lemming that you think that actually has value to anybody?”

This isn’t a new revelation by any means. Still, when filmmakers dedicate multiple years to crafting a film, and the only thing people are going to comment about is the box office outcome, that will undoubtedly be a frustrating moment for someone trying to entertain others, given that their primary motivation wasn’t to make hundreds of millions of dollars for a studio but instead simply trying to tell a story, and in this case, a very personal one from Gray’s own life.