We may have forgotten, but 2023 was a really tough year for screenwriters and actors, who went on a very painful strike to assert their rights. Streaming platforms and artificial intelligence were to blame.
These strikes managed to push the film industry to the extreme, which suffered as much as the lesser-known screenwriters and actors, those who need to work every day to pay their bills. Fortunately for everyone, there was a movie that saved the most tense summer in Hollywood history.
On Thursday night, at the Palm Springs Film Awards, Meryl Streep made a rare public appearance and, in the process, showered praise on Barbie, the movie that saved everything.
No one took her seriously, but Barbie saved them all
Streep, who attended the event to present Carey Mulligan with the International Star Award, took the stage after the previous award was given to Billie Eilish and Finneas for their hit “What Was I Made For?”.
Before presenting the award to Mulligan, Streep said to the duo: “I just want to say to Billie and Finneas that you have delivered the Barbie bomb of love. You saved the cinema last summer and all our jobs. You have brought joy to countless generations and genders of people, and you should ride that wave, kids, until you are old and deserve to be jaded like me.”
And it is that, for those who do not remember, Barbie broke the box office record in 2023 by raising a whopping 1.442 billion dollars. That is, it was the highest-grossing film of the year, surpassing the brilliant Super Mario Bros. The Movie (1.360 billion dollars).
Alongside Barbie, Oppenheimer, on the same Friday in July, also reached a brutal box office figure of 950 million dollars worldwide. That’s why many say that, without those two great Warner Bros. projects, the summer cinema would have dragged the industry to the bottom of the sea… with terrible consequences for everyone.
