Paramount defends CinemaScore’s F-rating for mother!

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

So you might not have heard, but over the weekend Darren Aronofsky‘s experimental thriller MOTHER! has gained a rare F-rating on CinemaScore, only the 12th to ever receive one. Which…ouch.

However, here’s what Paramount’s worldwide president of marketing and distribution Megan Colligan had to say about the CinemaScore and box-office take:

This movie is very audacious and brave…You are talking about a director at the top of his game, and an actress at the top of her game. They made a movie that was intended to be bold. Everyone wants original filmmaking, and everyone celebrates Netflix when they tell a story no one else wants to tell. This is our version. We don’t want all movies to be safe. And it’s okay if some people don’t like it.

You know, I have to hand it to Paramount, it is bold to produce a film like this, and release it to a wide audience. There was a time when challenging and divisive mid-budget films were allowed to thrive, and while the box-office receipts for MOTHER! are disappointing, at least the film is generating buzz and talk, and might even have some legs moving forward. If so, who knows? Maybe we’ll see more films like this in the future.

Even more importantly is to know what CinemaScores actually is. See, it’s based on audience reactions coming out of the theater, based on what they were expecting. This is why Adam Sandler and TRANSFORMERS films perform well with audiences – people went in knowing what they were going to get. With MOTHER! people probably went in to see a drama or horror (which MOTHER! is both)…but not quite something as intense and allegorical. So it makes sense that audiences would be shaken or unprepared. For comparison’s sake, MOTHER! is sitting at 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is far from the worst rated films (and actually makes sense, given its purposefully divisive nature).

Meanwhile, you can watch MOTHER! in theaters right now, and decide for yourself!