Yes, She's The One scene is F*cking fantastic. Well, there are a lot of amazing scenes... Come Undone... Take That moment with promoter... Many many...

 

 

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Better-Man-Robbi...y/dp/B0DQFMTZYW

 

Cool!

April 4? It's good date.

Btw, there is premiere of the movie in Poland today, while France will get its release in a week, Jan-22.

So some people say before not all countries even started to show Better Man.

 

--

 

Yes, it's 11.9M USD WW by yesterday.

 

 

--

 

This lady said so many good words about Robbie in the beginning...

I think Robbie is really enjoying the moment when all interviews are all about art, even if this art is mostly cinematography.

 

Many deep conversations, all this stuff around the movie on social networks, defo new kind of feelings... I swear he should get a boost of new topics for his lyrics. It's the best point of everything we're seeing nowadays.

 

Haven't seen this interview but read this is a good one.

The interviews is a big US fan of Robbie.

 

Should be lovely as well :)

 

 

‘I hate this movie, and I haven’t even seen it’ – Americans won’t let a chimp Robbie Williams entertain them

 

Better Man is a genuinely good movie but it’s bombing – and now his song has been disqualified from the Oscars too

The part of Robbie Williams in A Better Man is played by a CGI chimpanzee and voiced by the real Williams. Photograph: John Nacion/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures

 

Despite the terrible box office performance, and movie theatres cancelling screenings, Americans are at least talking about the Robbie Williams biopic, Better Man.

 

“I hate this movie, and I haven’t even seen it … it makes me angry and I don’t know why!” complains TikToker Jasmine Dayra, one of thousands posting similar videos. Others claim they have been “gaslit” into believing he’s a huge star, or that the film is the result of “the Mandela effect”, a false memory shared by a large group of people. “I just found out Robbie Williams is real,” says one angry poster.

 

This sense of seething affront has arisen because a film on general release in the US is a biopic about a pop star most Americans haven’t heard of. Aside from the song Millennium which was a radio hit in 1999 (and doesn’t even feature in the film), Williams has always struggled to make it in the US.

 

More confounding is that Williams is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee, and voiced by the real Williams. As one person on X put it: “Robbie Williams had a huge hit here in 1999 … So Brits need to understand that to us this movie is like a Lou Bega biopic but for some reason he’s an iguana.”

 

For uninitiated Americans reading, Robbie Williams rose to fame in the British boyband Take That before going solo and becoming one of the most famous men in the UK, as well as a star in Australia, Europe, much of Asia and Latin America (in Argentina, for example, he had sex with the model Amalia Granata, who became a celebrity by revealing the story on television and eventually leveraged her fame into becoming a congresswoman). He has sold 75m records worldwide – only the Beatles have more No 1 albums in the UK – and his 1997 hit Angels was for years the most requested pop song at British funerals.

 

Williams was the perfect star for an era of shiny-floor Saturday night TV shows and tabloid newspapers, known as much for his answering-back-to-teacher cheek as his platinum-selling albums, which were all pilloried by the serious music press. But in recent years his peerless pop songwriting – particularly his work with his long-term collaborator Guy Chambers – has been reappraised, with even Vice describing him as “the Eucharist of live entertainment”.

 

If you want to learn more, you’re in luck: Better Man is the third telling of Williams’s story in the space of a year. November 2023 saw the release of a four-part Netflix docuseries that focused on the singer’s panic attacks, extreme drug use and disastrous move into comedy-rap during the peak of his solo career in the 2000s. Two months ago, the BBC released an outstanding three-part documentary, filled with unseen footage from deep in the archives, on the history of the British boyband. Williams was a central contributor, narrating his own career in Take That as well as analysing the imitators who came later. Those seven hours of documentary can be added to the two biographies of Williams by the legendary Smash Hits writer Chris Heath, which are two of the best books about fame’s destabilising effect on the human psyche you’ll ever read.

 

You might fairly assume that the baggie of Williams’s life story has already been emptied and licked clean. But Better Man is the richest telling yet, an unusual and emotive biopic that centers Williams’s relationships with his father and his ex-girlfriend, the singer Nicole Appleton from All Saints (a British girlband even less famous in the US than Williams). Their relationship lasted less than a year but provides the film’s emotional core, especially the abortion Appleton was forced into having by her management and record company.

 

Having Williams depicted by an ape is so surprisingly effective that you almost forget about it after 10 minutes; it would have been far worse had the role been played by some Rada graduate doing a dodgy accent. But it’s also a reflection of Williams’s continuing desire to be the centre of attention. The animated element allows him to provide the speaking and singing voice for his own life story, a move not seen since Eminem’s 8 Mile (and that wasn’t technically a biopic, as Eminem played Jimmy Smith Jr, a character heavily based on his own life). It works: only Robbie Williams can really capture the unique charisma of Robbie Williams.

 

Still, it’s far from perfect: the overreliance on CGI renders scenes about abortion and self-harm strangely Pixar-fied, and the voiceover from Williams, delivering unexceptional post-hoc reflections about his depression and addiction, suggests that while he has found the right director to tell his story, he could do with a better shrink. But overall the film is taut and entertaining with an unlikely message for such a mainstream multiplex musical: that f***-ups remain f***-ups, bad fathers don’t redeem themselves, and you can either accept people with their painful flaws or face oblivion.

 

Reviewers tend to agree. New York Magazine praised its “blazing, restless inventiveness” and the Washington Post said the director, Michael Gracey, “has managed to reinvent the biopic”. There are plenty of sops to American viewers too, with characters going to great lengths to explain that playing Knebworth is a big deal and the value placed by Britain’s chart-focused music industry on having a No 1 single.

 

Better Man has performed poorly even in territories where Robbie is a star, grossing only $11.5m worldwide as of Wednesday. Photograph: YouTube

 

Better Man has performed poorly even in territories where Robbie is a star, grossing only $11.5m worldwide as of Wednesday. Photograph: YouTube

 

Unfortunately, very few people will find that out for themselves: Better Man cost about $110m to make and was acquired by Paramount for US distribution for a further $25m. Much of that budget went into the expensive CGI to render Williams as a 3D chimpanzee, but there are also huge dance and concert sequences, for one of which the film-makers closed the whole of Regent Street in central London to film. The film grossed a paltry $1.1m in the US opening weekend; it’s supposed to be going on more general release this week but some cinemas are scaling back plans to screen it. I rewatched it on a Tuesday evening at a Manhattan cinema where the audience was made up of only one couple (plus my gaggle of ex-pat friends – among them serious journalists, writers, artists and film-makers who applauded after the musical numbers. One said they had goosebumps hearing the opening bars of Let Me Entertain You play over the Paramount logo at the start).

 

A large portion of that huge production outlay won’t be as dear as some have reported, as the Australian government covered a chunk of the costs through subsidies and film funds (the film was mostly made in the Australian state of Victoria and Gracey is Australian). Even so, Better Man’s performance is anaemic in territories where Robbie is a star, grossing only $11.5m worldwide as of Wednesday. Paramount seems unlikely to recoup the money it has spent on press, advertising and distribution in the US.

 

This is not the end of the indignities for Williams. Even a bad box office run could have led to a decent showing on streaming services if the publicity campaign had gone well in the US. But Williams’ best chance of breaking through was to be nominated for best original song at the Oscars, which, even if he didn’t win, would have allowed him to perform at the ceremony. So Better Man – which mostly contains a mix of Williams’s biggest hits and a couple of covers – cynically includes one new song, Forbidden Road, that was duly longlisted for the award, only to be disqualified by the Academy’s music branch last month for incorporating “material from an existing song that was not written” for the movie.

 

The song it supposedly ripped off? The 1973 Jim Croce song I Got a Name with lyrics by Norman Gimbel and music by Charles Fox. One of the governors of the Academy’s music branch in 2025? That would be Charles Fox. Talk about bad luck.

 

But the US has long been Williams’s white whale.

 

Robbie Williams performs on the stage of Antwerp’s airport palace in 2003. Photograph: Peter de Voecht/AFP/Gettyimages

 

Robbie Williams performs on the stage of Antwerp’s airport palace in 2003. Photograph: Peter de Voecht/AFP/Gettyimages

 

In 1999, British musicians had fallen out of favour in the US, with the Spice Girls (at No 99) the only British act in the Billboard 100. But, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, there was good news on the horizon: “Among the current crop of British acts, there are high hopes for Robbie Williams, a former member of ‘boys band’ Take That who is being carefully groomed for his US launch beginning next month”. Unlike previous flops, one UK industry expert assured us: “Capitol Records (part of EMI) is spending a lot of time setting him up. They’re consciously avoiding a campaign of UK hype; we’ve been there before, and it hasn’t delivered.”

 

But time after time, Williams’s attempts to break through in the US were scuppered. By 1999, Robbie had already left Take That, struggled to get a solo career off the ground and then gone stratospheric with a string of hits that included Angels, Millennium, No Regrets and Let Me Entertain You. At this point he went on a 25-date tour of North America, where audiences seemed bewildered by his cheeky humour and his obsession with his arse/ass.

 

While Millennium was a minor US radio hit, and his debut US album sold a perfectly decent 600,000 copies, Robbie never became a star. His self-deprecation failed to translate in a country where pop stars sang their own praises. Williams can’t even wait till he finishes a song to poke fun at himself. In live performances he talks to the crowd in the gaps between lyrics, constantly puncturing any moments of earnestness.

 

In 2003, having signed him to one of the biggest record deals of all time, worth £80m (roughly $150m at the time), EMI tried again and failed to make much headway. A few years later the hits dried up for Williams even in the UK and EMI, the storied label of the Beatles, was eventually sold to its rival Universal in part because of its bad bet on Williams breaking out in the US. The New York Times, writing about the folly at the time, said: “Mr Williams’s music and personality are too imbued with over-the-top British humor – a hybrid of Monty Python and the British comedian Ali G, who poses as a white gangsta rapper – to capture the fleeting attention of American youth.”

 

Instead of trying to make it bigger, Williams spent much of the 2010s enjoying his anonymity in the US. He married an American actor, Ayda Field (best-known as Jeannie in Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip), and moved to Los Angeles where he was able to live a life of relative normalcy.

 

But this third failed attempt to break the US has been the most costly and arguably the biggest shame, because Better Man is a movie worth seeing. Even the TikTokers who bothered to actually see it mostly loved it. “I’ve never heard of Robbie Williams,” screeches the creator Alex Colemann in one video, “but I watched it, I took a leap of faith and it paid off 10-fold … This shit slaps.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/...s-better-man-us

Edited January 16Jan 16 by Sydney11

What Happened To Nicole Appleton After Better Man & Robbie Williams Relationship

 

Paramount Pictures

 

Better Man is a wonderfully bizarre and completely refreshing entry in the biopic genre. The film centers around the prominent British musician, Robbie Williams, and his rise to stardom. The decision to portray Williams as a CGI monkey was divisive, but one that ultimately helped the movie to gain the momentum it has — as audiences remain fascinated by Michael Gracey's Better Man. The biopic has secured gleaming reviews and sits at an incredibly impressive 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite the feature's success, Better Man poses some unanswered questions regarding the nature of Williams' unfolding relationships.

 

Better Man's cast of characters is extensive, showcasing an array of talent across the singer's career. Among the varying relationships through the years, All Saints singer, Nicole Appleton, is one of the most integral figures in Williams' life. Although Better Man fabricated the duo's first interaction, the film does not fail to deliver on demonstrating the significance of their role in each other's lives. Interestingly, the movie ends with a selection of scenes that show the repairing of Williams and Appleton's relationship, but what happened to the All Saints singer after Better Man remains to be seen.

 

Nicole Appleton's Music Career After All Saints Split: Solo Career & All Saints Reunion

All Saints Were The Power Band Of The '90s But Disbanded In 2001

 

Without a doubt, All Saints was one of the most successful pop groups of the 1990s. The band earned themselves two multi-platinum albums, grossing more than $12 million worldwide in record sales. However, All Saints decided to part ways in 2001 after a string of arguments that meant the four-piece group began to "kind of hate each other." (via The Standard) Appleton began a solo career shortly after, first joining forces with her sister to create the double act, Appleton, in 2002. The band dominated the charts with their singles, "Fantasy" and "Don't Worry," which fell into the U.K.'s top 10 Charts.

 

Since then, not only has Nicole Appleton begun to host her own weekend radio show on Magic Radio, but All Saints have reunited to release three more albums, in 2006, 2016, and most recently, in 2018. All Saints' initial reformation in 2006 proved challenging, as the group released a third album but was later dropped by the record label. Following their second split in 2009, the group joined forces again to release the albums Red Flag and Testament, and have clearly never lost the public's adoration. T

 

Nicole Appleton & Liam Gallagher Got Married & Started A Family Before Their Divorce In 2014

Nicole Appleton & Robbie Williams Were Engaged Before Going Separate Ways In January 1999

 

After Appleton and Williams' separation, the singer began a relationship with the frontman of Oasis in 2000, Liam Gallagher. The pair married on Valentine's Day at Old Marylebone Town Hall in 2008 and were together for a total of 13 years before their divorce. During this time, Appleton and Gallagher would have their first and only son together in July 2001 — Gene Gallagher. Their 23-year-old son is seemingly following in his parents' footsteps, as he is reportedly the lead singer of an indie band called Villanelle, although he has since been plagued with criticisms of nepotism.

 

Alongside Williams' relationship with Appleton, Better Man documents the singer's feud with Gallagher.

 

Reports of Appleton and Gallagher's separation stated that the All Saints member accused Gallagher of adultery, revealing his expected child with a journalist for The New York Times. At a later date, a judge decided that Appleton was "entitled to a decree of divorce," (via People) due to sufficient evidence that Gallagher committed adultery. Astonishingly, the divorce cost more than £800,000 in legal bills as the pair struggled with dividing their assets, which were worth close to £11 million (via The Guardian). Alongside Williams' relationship with Appleton, Better Man documents the singer's feud with Gallagher.

 

Nicole Appleton's Relationship With Robbie Williams & Her Thoughts On Better Man

Nicole Appleton Was Reduced To Tears By Better Man

 

Nicole Appleton was consulted on the script for Better Man, as well as invited to an early preview of the feature film. The singer attended the screening with her sister and fellow Appleton member, Natalie. Williams and Appleton are still remarkably close friends, to the extent that the Take That singer did not feel comfortable telling their story without her approval. This is a testament to their affection for each other, particularly as Williams feels a great amount of guilt about the way he treated the All Saints star during the late 1990s (via The Mirror).

 

According to Hello, Williams said: "As soon as she left the screening, I got straight on the phone with her and FaceTimed her. And we both wept. And then we couldn't stop weeping." Appleton has yet to make any official statement regarding Better Man, though she has taken to social media to describe the event as "an amazing night! Such an incredible rollercoaster.

 

https://screenrant.com/better-man-nicole-ap...-what-happened/

Edited January 16Jan 16 by Sydney11

"This shit slaps"

I must try and see if I can get that into my conversation tomorrow :lol: :lol: :lol:

The movie is not playing in Slovenia anymore. End of the run here.

It's rather fast, frogec...

 

 

Nice answers by Rob and Michael here...

 

 

UPD 16.01.2025

 

WW Box Office

 

Better Man vs. The Brutalist

$11,999,169 vs. $2,751,317

 

--------------------------------------------------------------

 

International Box Office (without US/Canada)

*comparison of the countries with any known figures*

 

Better Man vs. Taylor Swift - The Eras Tour

 

Australia: $2,526,826 vs. $5,957,183

Czech Republic: $67,696 vs. $227,405

Germany: $968,965 vs. $3,911,805

Hungary: $31,000 vs. $141,648

Italy: $606,759 vs. $1,123,831

Netherlands: $434,604 vs. $474,456

Portugal: $26,283 vs. $356,645

Slovakia: $17,763 vs. $79,575

Spain: $317,914 vs. $1,909,337

UAE: $53,743 vs. $697,076

UK: $6,118,193 vs. $15,159,422

@1880021660776165576

 

Robbie Williams, Michael Gracey, Luke Millar, Paul Currie and Damon Herriman take you behind the scenes and explain how Better Man was made in Melbourne.

 

From the government support from VicScreen and Screen Australia, to the talented Victorian crew, the team all shared in the unique vision of Better Man, and crafted it into an incredibly bold and unique film.

 

:P

 

@1879917206911533353

In 2003, having signed him to one of the biggest record deals of all time, worth £80m (roughly $150m at the time), EMI tried again and failed to make much headway. A few years later the hits dried up for Williams even in the UK and EMI, the storied label of the Beatles, was eventually sold to its rival Universal in part because of its bad bet on Williams breaking out in the US

 

Gah!

 

Even in a relatively well-researched article, popular narrative wins out over facts.

This is just not true. The ‘hits’ did not ‘dry up’ in the U.K.’a few years later’.

Even if we take this as from 2006 and only in the U.K.:

Rudebox: No 4

Lovelight: No 8

Bodies: No 2

You Know Me: No 6

Shame: No 2

Candy: No 1

Go Gentle: No 10.

 

and that is with taking 3 years off entirely and a couple of years for the Take That reunion.

 

And it’s not true that the EMI deal was a ‘bad bet’ or that it had any impact of the sale of EMI.

That deal was profitable for EMI!

 

This is one of my beefs with the Netflix doc - it perpetuated that narrative rather than correct it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Release Dates

 

Worldwide Premiere:

30.08.2024 (51st Telluride Film Festival)

Worldwide Release:

26.12.2024

Streaming Release:

10.02.2025

Blu-Ray / DVD Release:

07.04.2025

 

Links

Official Movie Website:

https://www.bettermanmovie.com/

Official Movie Sub Website:

https://betterman.robbiewilliams.com

General discussions of the movie on BJ:

http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=275237

Part 1 - discussions of the movie on RW&TT Forum:

http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=243611

 

 

Official Trailers

Teaser

Trailer

Official OST

 

 

Release dates:

27.12.2024 (Digital) / 17.01.2025 (CD - UK)

Amazon UK (to buy OST):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Original-Mo...usic&sr=1-1

Link of the OST on BJ:

http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?s...t=0&start=0

Charts:

Number #1 Album in UK, Ireland

 

 

Ratings

 

IMDd

7.6 (23K marks)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14260836/ratin...?ref_=tt_ov_rat

Rotten Tomatoes

88% (Tomatometer)

90% (Popcornmeter)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/better_man

Metacritic

77 (Metascore)

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/better-man...=MCD-06-10aaa1c

Kinopoisk (RU)

7.7 (5.3K marks)

https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/4965186/votes/

 

 

Box Office

US & Canada

$1,952,504

International

$17,986,684

Worldwide

$19,970,332

p.s. By 21.02.2025

All Awards Wins (15) & Nominations (51) for Better Man by far:

 

Hollywood Music In Media Awards (HMMA) 2024 - 20.11

- Best Original Song - Feature Film (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

- Best Music Themed Film, Biopic or Musical (Paul Currie, Michael Gracey, Craig McMahon, Coco Xiaolu, MaJules Daly)

Rolling Stone UK Awards 2024 - 28.11

- The Film Award (Better Man) - Winner

Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards (WAFCA) 2024 - 08.12

- Best Motion Capture (Jonno Davies)

Indiana Film Journalists Association (IFJA) Awards 2024 - 16.12

- Best Vocal/Motion Capture Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies)

- Best Stunt/Movement Choreography (Slavisa Ivanovic, Ashey Wallen, Nicholas Daines, Spencer Susser, Tim Wong)

- Best Special Effects (Luke Millar, Scott MacIntyre)

- Original Vision Award

Critics Association of Central Florida Awards - 02.01

- Best Hybrid Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies)

DiscussingFilm Global Critic Award (DFGFCA) 2024 - 04.01

- Best Visual Effects

Golden Globes 2025 - 05.01

- Best Original Song (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

Utah Film Critics Association (UFCA) Awards - 06.01

- Best Visual Effects

Austin Film Critics Association (AFCA) Awards - 06.01

- Best Voice Acting/Animated/Digital Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies)

The TomMCJL Awards (personal) - 07.01

- Best Soundtrack - Winner

- Best Original Song (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road) - Winner

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards 2025 - 07.02

- Best Film - Winner

- Best Direction in Film (Michael Gracey) - Winner

- Best Screenplay in Film (Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson) - Winner

- Best Lead Actor in Film (Jonno Davies) - Winner

- Best Supporting Actress in Film (Alison Steadman)

- Best Supporting Actor in Film (Damon Herriman) - Winner

- Best Cinematography in Film

- Best Sound in Film

- Best Original Score in Film - Winner

- Best Soundtrack

- Best Original Song (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

- Best Visual Effects or Animation - Winner

- Best Editing in Film presented by Spectrum Films - Winner

- Best Production Design in Film

- Best Costume Design in Film

- Best Casting in Film - Winner

Critics Choice Awards 2025 - 07.02

- Best Visual Effects (Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs)

Annie Awards 2025 - 08.02

- Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Live Action Production (Shaun Freeman, Luisma Lavin Peredo, Carlos Lin, Seoungseok Charlie Kim, Kaori Miyazawa)

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) International Awards 2025 - 11.02

- Best Film - Winner

- Best Lead Actor in Film (Jonno Davies)

- Best Supporting Actress in Film (Alison Steadman)

- Best Supporting Actor in Film (Damon Herriman)

- Best Direction in Film (Michael Gracey) - Winner

- Best Screenplay in Film (Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson)

Visual Effects Society Awards - 11.02

- Outstanding Visual Effects In a Photoreal Feature (Luke Millar, Andy Taylor, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs)

- Outstanding Character In a Photoreal Feature (Robbie Williams) - Winner

- Outstanding CG Cinematography (Blair Burke, Shweta Bhatnagar, Tim Walker, Craig Young)

- Outstanding Composing & Lightning In a Feature (Mark McNicholl, Gordon Spencer de Haseth, Eva Snyder, Markus Reithoffer) 

Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) Award 2025 - 12.02

- Outstanding Original Song for a Comedy or Musical Visual Media Production (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road)

Australian Writers' Guild Awards - 13.02

- Feature Film - Original (Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole, Michael Gracey)

The BAFTA Film Awards - 16.02

- Special Visual Effects

Latino Entertainment Journalists Association Film Awards - 17.02

- Best Visual Effects (Keith Herft, Luke Millar, Peter Stubbs, David Clayton)

Online Film & Television Association - 23.02

- Best Visual Effects

Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) - 23.02

- Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Feature Motion Picture (Supervising Music Editor: Timothy Ryan; Music Editors: Craig Beckett, Lena Glikson, Cory Milano, Liam Moses, Joe E. Rand, Chris Scallan, Emily Rogers Swanson; Vocal Editors: Noah Hubbell, Anna Muehlichen)

Guild of Music Supervisors Awards nominations (GMS) - 23.02

- Best Music Supervision in Major Budget Films (Jordan Carroll)

Oscars Academy Awards - 02.03

- Best Visual Effects (Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs)

 

 

45th nomination for Better Man

 

 

Guild of Music Supervisors Awards nominations (GMS) - February 23 2025

 

Best Music Supervision in Major Budget Films

 

Jordan Carroll – “Better Man”

Dave Jordan – “Deadpool & Wolverine”

Julianne Jordan – “The Instigators”

Rachel Levy – “Twisters”

Tom MacDougall, Matt Walker – “Moana 2”

Maggie Rodford – “Wicked”

 

https://www.gmsawards.com/

 

‘Better Man’ interview: Michael Gracey on choreography, Robbie Williams, and that monkey

 

The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey is currently promoting his newest movie-musical, A Better Man, which is generating buzz for, ahem, obvious reasons—the foremost of which is that it stars a dancing, CGI monkey played in part by one of the U.K.’s most prolific pop artists, Robbie Williams.

 

Perhaps equally as entertaining as the film itself is the fact that Americans are woefully unfamiliar with A Better Man star Robbie Williams, who rose to fame in the ’90s when he joined the English boy band, Take That. Essentially, Williams is the equivalent of Justin Timberlake for us Yanks. Over the years, he’s gone on to amass well over $21 million in record sales with hits like “Angels” and “Rock DJ.” Suffice it to say, Williams’ semi-biopic had to be one for the books, leading director Michael Gracey to boldly ask the question: “What if he was a monkey?”

 

During a recent interview with The Mary Sue, Gracey talked all things choreography for A Better Man, which, despite making a CGI ape stand in for its title character, had to be as “grounded” as possible. When it comes to those over-the-top dance sequences (i.e. that viral Regent Street scene), Gracey stressed the importance of making the movement feel “real” given its more fantastical elements, saying: “There’s got to be a physicality to it for you to believe that this is a real person in a real world.”

 

Obviously, Williams’ monkey is somewhat anthropomorphized here, and (mostly) moves like a human would. This is because Williams put on a mocap suit and did his thing on stage for certain reference shots, meaning it’s not just his voice we’re hearing. Again, Gracey took a big risk by making a movie about a pop singer who’s relatively unknown here in the States—and that was before he decided to turn Williams into a literal ape. But the filmmaker understood exactly what he was doing for A Better Man, saying he knew “full well” that this would act as many Americans’ first introduction to Williams.

 

I mean, we knew full well that the majority of America don’t know who Robbie Williams is. But then, you know, I don’t know whether the character Bradley Cooper plays in A Star is Born is based on a real person or not a real person. So what’s interesting is in a film like that, you just buy into the character. You invest and you care about them, and so for me, it was almost like for people who don’t know Robbie Williams, what’s amazing is they watch this like it’s an original musical like The Greatest Showman. They’re hearing the songs for the first time, they’re hearing the story for the first time, and that’s great. It’s just very different to people outside of the U.S. who obviously know who he is.

 

“Angel” may have been the Williams song fans were most excited to hear, but from a personal standpoint, Gracey was most moved by the uplifting “Something Beautiful.” When curating a musical, the director explained that the inclusion of a song works to serve the narrative, with tracks like “Better Man” being an appropriate fit for the scene where Williams checks out of rehab. To him, “Something Beautiful” marks the first time our protagonist is “honest” with himself; something Gracey described as “incredibly human”—adding a layer of irony to the whole Monkey Thing.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/cel...id=BingNewsVerp

Edited January 17Jan 17 by Sydney11

WHY IS HOLLYWOOD OBSESSED WITH BIOPICS !

 

 

Bob Dylan, Robbie Williams, Amy Winehouse and Bob Marley were among the subjects of recent biopics - so what's behind Hollywood's obsession? Sequel fatigue and a wealth of source material may be propelling the surge in biopics. That's according to Geek Ireland editor Olivia Fahy who told The Hard Shoulder that biopics are "easy content". "Sometimes if the person is still alive, you can ask them if they want to be a part of it - or if they're not, there's usually a lot of things written about them," she said. "So it's easy content from that perspective."

 

Biopics may remedy sequel fatigue among movie-goers, Ms Fahy said. "People are getting so bored of all the sequels and the franchises, so this is a bit more different," she said. "They also make great Oscar-bait."

 

Biopics of musicians also offer film studios a new form of revenue through their soundtracks. "When it comes to music biopics, you know that the soundtrack is also going to make money as well," Ms Fahy said. "Bohemian Rhapsody wasn’t exactly critically praised – Rami Malek went on to win the Oscar but that soundtrack did very well.

 

"Better Man – it's not doing great in the box office but some of the soundtrack is picking up."

 

The biopic also allows audiences an opportunity to learn more about famous people. "If it’s a person you are familiar with there’s a certain sense of 'I already know what I’m going to get out of this but there could be some things that surprise me," Ms Fahy said. "Back to Black - the Amy Winehouse biopic - we all knew the story but it gave us a different take on it by revealing a few things that didn't make the movie."

 

There are currently three biopics in Irish cinemas - Better Man (Robbie Williams), A Complete Unknown (Bob Dylan) and Maria (Maria Callas).

 

 

https://www.newstalk.com/news/why-is-hollyw...biopics-2126931

Edited January 17Jan 17 by Sydney11

 

Director Of Acclaimed Movie Set To Be 2025’s First Box Office Flop Reportedly Put His Own Money Into The Budget

 

By

Matthew Biggin

 

Better Man director Michael Gracey reportedly put his own money into the production budget for the box office bomb. Conceived in 2021, and released theatrically in the United States on December 25, 2024, Better Man is a biographical musical film, chronicling the life and career of British popstar Robbie Williams. The movie is unusual in that Williams is portrayed by a CGI chimp, performed by Johnno Davies via motion capture, and voiced by Davies and Williams. The film has proven to be a box office bomb, grossing just $12 million globally to date, against a production budget of $110 million.

 

Per reports in Puck, Gracey was one of six main investors, recruited by producer Paul Currie, CAA Media Finance, and Australian company Elevate Production Finance, who invested some of their own money into the project. It seems Gracey had a very hands-on role in the movie, serving as director, co-writer, co-producer, and co-financier, and it is likely that the success of his directorial debut, The Greatest Showman, allowed him to achieve this.

 

It is unclear how much money Gracey put into the project, but it feels unlikely that he would be making any kind of return from the movie. A director financing their own movie is considered taboo outside independent productions, but it also suggests that the movie represents something of a passion project for Gracey, so there is a good chance he will not be particularly bothered that the movie has tanked financially, as long as he is happy with the finished outcome.

 

"But the biggest stumbling block, I believe, was the choice to cast Williams as a chimp; this made it less appealing for fans of the former Take That singer, and harder for audiences to invest".

 

Better Man certainly takes risks, and the decision to not have Williams himself appear in the film, as well as having him played by a computer-generated chimp was a quirky gamble that has clearly not paid off. How much this factor alone has affected the box office is anyone's guess, but it's bound to have contributed. This process will be a learning curve for Gracey, who is still only on his second feature film - discounting 2021 documentary Pink: All I Know So Far - and may be reluctant to finance future projects himself.

 

Multiple factors can lead a movie to struggle theatrically, and Williams' failure to break America will have contributed to Better Man's failings, coupled with the fact the star is also in the twilight of his career. But the biggest stumbling block, I believe, was the choice to cast Williams as a chimp; this made it less appealing for fans of the former Take That singer, and harder for audiences to invest. It's nice to see Gracey thinking outside the box and trying something unique with Better Man, but it feels unlikely he will use an animal substitute in subsequent movies.

 

 

https://screenrant.com/better-man-movie-bud...ctor-own-money/