Max Borg
On November 1, Warner Bros. released Juror No. 2, Clint Eastwood’s 40th directorial feature, in US theaters. Controversially, though, the studio decided not only to limit the release to 50 cinemas nationwide (reportedly with no plans to expand it later), but also to avoid reporting the film’s box office, effectively suggesting they were burying the picture (Variety has reported the movie was originally set for a streaming release, and received a minimal theatrical rollout simply as a professional courtesy to Eastwood).
The choice was baffling, to say the least, considering the filmmaker’s appeal among older viewers, who could use an incentive to return to theaters (which is happening internationally: this writer lives in Switzerland, where Juror No. 2 is currently playing in the French-speaking region – German and Italian will follow at a later date – in pretty much every major first-run cinema available). It’s also a bit of a smack in the face, given Eastwood’s five-decade relationship with the studio. In terms of spectacularly bone-headed acts of bridge-burning, this might even dwarf losing Christopher Nolan to Universal.
Ironically, Universal is where Eastwood initially made a name for himself as a leading man in the States, following the success of his brief stint in Italy with Sergio Leone. It’s also where he made his directorial debut with Play Misty For Me in 1971, the same year that marked his first major role in a Warner Bros. production as the star of Dirty Harry. He directed three more films for Universal and also appeared in Michael Cimino’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, distributed by United Artists, before moving permanently to the Warner lot in 1976 with The Outlaw Josey Wales.
As an actor, he strayed from the studio only twice, for Escape from Alcatraz (Paramount, 1979) and In the Line of Fire (Columbia, 1993), plus an uncredited cameo in the live-action Casper movie (Universal, 1996). As a director, he briefly returned to his first filmmaking home in 2008 for Changeling, which Brian Grazer and Ron Howard had been developing at Universal since 2006 and offered to Eastwood after scheduling conflicts prevented Howard from directing it himself.
Other than that, he’s arguably been the face of Warner Bros. since the early ‘70s, an unmatched feat in an era where most directors tend to alternate between studios based on the specific project and producers with first-look deals have to rely on box office to get them renewed. It is no surprise, then, that he was chosen to narrate not one, but two documentaries about the studio’s history: 1991’s Here’s Looking at You, Warner Bros. and 2008’s You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story (incidentally, both titles are quotes from Casablanca, the kind of film they would most likely relegate to streaming nowadays).
Additionally, the scoring stage on the studio lot in Burbank was given his name in the 1990s, a tribute to his love for music and career as a composer, singer and lyricist (he has written scores and/or songs for several of his movies). Such was his standing at one point that he allegedly threatened to take his business to Paramount when a newly appointed executive gave him an ill-advised note after a private screening.
And then Cry Macho happened. A casualty of Jason Kilar’s monumentally shortsighted Project Popcorn (whereby all Warner movies released in 2021 were available in theaters and on HBO Max at the same time), it was a box office disappointment and proved divisive among critics and fans (personally, while I did enjoy it, I believe Eastwood should have stuck to the initial plan of no longer acting in his own films after Unforgiven).
Despite the pandemic context, the film’s commercial performance did not sit well with David Zaslav who, upon becoming CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery in the spring of 2022, is reported to have said, referring to Eastwood specifically, that the studio doesn’t owe any favors to anyone (this was in response to the admission that the movie had received the green light even though there were doubts about its audience appeal).
Thus, Juror No. 2’s current status in US theaters could be seen as a punishment for the perceived slight against the studio, despite Eastwood delivering multiple hits (The Mule, released in 2018, grossed $175 million worldwide against a budget of $50 million) and the movie itself presumably being vetted by Zaslav’s team, given the man’s obsession with the bottom line.
Ironically, while the executives are pretending this new film doesn’t exist, they’re seemingly not against highlighting past glories: since October 28, the Warner Bros. Classics YouTube channel has been uploading clips from old Eastwood movies on an almost daily basis, in addition to the first part of the nine-episode documentary Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy, which was first shown in 2021 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the partnership between filmmaker and studio. Or perhaps whoever’s in charge of that account – whose subscriber count is small enough to keep it under the radar – is actively trolling the new management for their decision to actively squander the aforementioned legacy.
