Fly Me to the Moon, the new film starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson, had a bit of a mixed reception from the critics at Rotten Tomatoes. However, the movie’s audience score is very close to setting a new high for Tatum.
As of this writing, Fly Me to the Moon has a 67% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics, but its audience score is sitting at 88%. The latter is one percentage point short of matching the 89% audience score of 2022’s Dog as the highest of any movie starring Tatum. Fly Me to the Moon is also just higher than the 87% score earned by The LEGO Movie, which featured Tatum as the voice of Superman. However, The LEGO Movie just so happens to hold the highest Tomatometer rating of any Tatum film, scored 96% by critics.
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Fly Me to the Moon is directed by Greg Berlanti. Rose Gilroy wrote the script based on a story by Bill Kirstein and Keenan Flynn. Along with Tatum and Johansson in the leads, the cast also includes Jim Rash, Ray Romano, Woodey Harrelson, Colin Woodell, Colin Jost, and Anna Garcia.
The film is set during the Space Race of the 1960s between the United States and the Soviet Union. It focuses on the budding romance between a marketing specialist and the NASA director in charge of the launch of Apollo 11. While originally set to debut straight to streaming on Apple TV+, the movie was given a theatrical release based on strong test screenings.
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At the end of the day, I’m going to make up my own mind about whether I see a new movie or watch a new TV show. Still, despite the caveats with Rotten Tomatoes’ aggregation algorithm, I can’t help but take notice when something has an especially high or especially low Tomatometer score, and that may influence whether I see a movie in theaters or wait for streaming.
“It was originally direct to streaming,” Berlanti previously told Variety. “But then we handed in the cut and we started testing it. We tested it in Denver and it went very well. We tested it in California and we tested it in Texas. Every time, it was very much a resounding response from the focus group and testing that this was a theatrical movie.”
He continued, “The other thing that the testing audience also kept bringing up was wanting to see an original movie. They were so grateful for an original. Even though it’s obviously historical fiction, it’s an original story wrapped around that. They didn’t know what was going to happen in a way in the movie and that was so fresh for them.”
The satisfied audiences haven’t automatically translated into a box office success. Fly Me to the Moon opened at No. 5, projected to earn around $10 million for its debut. Notably, the film was expensive to develop, costing more than $100 million. However, given that it was intended to skip theaters in the first place, there’s a chance the movie will have better luck on streaming once it makes its way to Apple TV+.
Fly Me to the Moon is playing in theaters.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
