Adam Brody isn’t letting the discord around “Jennifer’s Body” die off just yet.
Almost 15 years since the 2009 film was released, Brody is calling out the bad marketing campaign surrounding the satirical high school horror movie. “Jennifer’s Body” followed a queen bee (Megan Fox) whose friendship with her best pal (Amanda Seyfried) is put to the test after she is part of a botched Satanic sacrifice led by a local rocker (Brody) and starts devouring teen boys. The film was written by “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama (“Yellowjackets”), and is now considered an iconic feminist horror film.
“To have it receive such tepid reviews – and in a way, to be a punching bag – felt shitty,” Brody told The Independent. “It wasn’t my movie, so I didn’t take the brunt of it, but it still felt a little unjust.”
Brody continued, “[The marketing] couldn’t have missed the mark harder. The film was a marketing person’s dream, and then to see them do that [with the poster]…It was part ‘Goosebumps,’ part Maxim. It’s not even anything she wears in the movie.”
The “Fleishman Is in Trouble” star added, “The film was directed by a woman, starring two women, written by that year’s screenwriting Oscar winner, and instead they’re like, ‘Let’s bury all of that. Don’t tell anyone that. This is for people who like ‘Transformers.'”
Director Kusama looked back on the teen male-centric marketing campaign in 2018, saying, “I kept sort of reminding everybody, ‘Guys, we can’t market this movie to boys,’ and then have them go to the theater expecting one thing and then seeing Megan Fox not really take off her clothes but rip a guy’s intestines out and eat them. At the time it was awful, but now I’m realizing this is evident of the world at large.”
Lead star Fox earlier said that “Jennifer’s Body” never “really stood a chance” due to her “image at the time” following “Transformers” fame.
“I was being vilified a little bit when the movie was getting ready for its release, it was that interesting juxtaposition to shooting up to extreme heights of fame right before the movie was released and then … the tearing me down was starting to happen,” Fox said. “Then I had this immediate fallout with someone I worked in the industry. That happened right when I was on the press tour for ‘Jennifer’s Body.’ I think it all sort of exploded at once. I think people definitely viewed me as negative or having bad intentions or just being really shallow and selfish, if it could be reduced and simplified even to that.”
She added in 2022, “I’ve never felt completely included in the feminist community and I do still think that it’s tricky in an awful way. Whatever I provoke in them is not something that they can digest very well. And so that comes back on me, as they reject me for those reasons. And I just don’t think that I was a very sympathetic victim.”
Almost 15 years since the 2009 film was released, Brody is calling out the bad marketing campaign surrounding the satirical high school horror movie. “Jennifer’s Body” followed a queen bee (Megan Fox) whose friendship with her best pal (Amanda Seyfried) is put to the test after she is part of a botched Satanic sacrifice led by a local rocker (Brody) and starts devouring teen boys. The film was written by “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama (“Yellowjackets”), and is now considered an iconic feminist horror film.
“To have it receive such tepid reviews – and in a way, to be a punching bag – felt shitty,” Brody told The Independent. “It wasn’t my movie, so I didn’t take the brunt of it, but it still felt a little unjust.”
Brody continued, “[The marketing] couldn’t have missed the mark harder. The film was a marketing person’s dream, and then to see them do that [with the poster]…It was part ‘Goosebumps,’ part Maxim. It’s not even anything she wears in the movie.”
The “Fleishman Is in Trouble” star added, “The film was directed by a woman, starring two women, written by that year’s screenwriting Oscar winner, and instead they’re like, ‘Let’s bury all of that. Don’t tell anyone that. This is for people who like ‘Transformers.'”
Director Kusama looked back on the teen male-centric marketing campaign in 2018, saying, “I kept sort of reminding everybody, ‘Guys, we can’t market this movie to boys,’ and then have them go to the theater expecting one thing and then seeing Megan Fox not really take off her clothes but rip a guy’s intestines out and eat them. At the time it was awful, but now I’m realizing this is evident of the world at large.”
Lead star Fox earlier said that “Jennifer’s Body” never “really stood a chance” due to her “image at the time” following “Transformers” fame.
“I was being vilified a little bit when the movie was getting ready for its release, it was that interesting juxtaposition to shooting up to extreme heights of fame right before the movie was released and then … the tearing me down was starting to happen,” Fox said. “Then I had this immediate fallout with someone I worked in the industry. That happened right when I was on the press tour for ‘Jennifer’s Body.’ I think it all sort of exploded at once. I think people definitely viewed me as negative or having bad intentions or just being really shallow and selfish, if it could be reduced and simplified even to that.”
She added in 2022, “I’ve never felt completely included in the feminist community and I do still think that it’s tricky in an awful way. Whatever I provoke in them is not something that they can digest very well. And so that comes back on me, as they reject me for those reasons. And I just don’t think that I was a very sympathetic victim.”
