Did Hollywood fail Ava DuVernay's movie Origin?

Ava DuVernay is an accomplished filmmaker. Her works include Selma, the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, and 13th, a documentary about race in the US criminal justice system, among others. Selma earned her a Golden Globe for best director and an Oscar nomination for best picture. 13th was nominated for a best documentary Oscar. 

With these accomplishments under her belt, why was Origin, DuVernay's latest movie, both a flop at the box office and snubbed at the 2024 Academy Awards?

Origin, based on Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, is a biographical drama about Wilkerson's life as she travels through Germany, India and the United States to look further into the caste systems in each country's history.

The movie was reviewed positively by critics and was predicted to be an indie darling and award show hit. Except neither of those things happened.

Recently, the official Twitter account for Origin took aim at Neon — the film's distributor — for not properly supporting and promoting it, as it got a limited theatrical release and very little marketing. 

Which now prompts the question: Did Hollywood fail Ava DuVernay?

To give us their thoughts, film and culture critics Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Jackson Weaver and Sarah-Tai Black join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud on Commotion.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus a review of the satirical comedy The American Society of Magical Negroes, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Kathleen, I'm gonna start with you. It feels unlikely to me that Ava herself is running Origin's Twitter account, but let's put this in context. How often do you see a movie use social media to directly drag its distributor like that?    

Kathleen: Never. I think this is pretty unprecedented. We see after the fact that directors talk about studios and how they maybe didn't support their films in a way that they wanted them to or actors saying the same thing. What we just heard Ava say is her struggle to connect the film and its content to its audiences, which is really the studio's job. But this was new for me and I found it refreshing because I think points were made and I love that it was coming from an official source, from the Twitter account.

Elamin: There's a lot of pressure to perform niceties in these moments. To be like, "I'm so grateful that distributors are doing their job," but this was a firm break from reality. And I agree with you. I find it refreshing too. But maybe let's just give people an overview, Kathleen, of what was shared on the Origin Twitter account before it was deleted. I should say it was deleted not that long after it was tweeted. 

Kathleen: So basically they were calling out Neon for not inviting the filmmakers of Origin to its Oscar party. In a quote tweet of a photo from the party, the account wrote, "Is it odd that the filmmakers of Neon's current film in theatres weren't invited to this Neon celebration? Nope. Standard operating procedure for founder Tom Quinn and team. That's how neon rolls."

For context, Neon had another film that was up for Oscar contention, Anatomy of a Fall. It was nominated for a bunch of Oscars and won best original screenplay. DuVernay and the Origin producer Paul Gaines were both at the Oscars, and they also went to the Vanity Fair afterparty. It was strange for them to not go to their own studio's party. They were calling that out. And then they had also been retweeting people who were upset that it didn't get the distribution or the awards accolades that people thought Origin deserved.

Elamin: Jackson, Kathleen just mentioned that Neon had a bunch of other movies at the Oscars. They also had Perfect Days, which was nominated for an Oscar. They had Michael Mann's biopic Ferrari, and also Anatomy of a Fall, which did end up winning an Oscar. Could part of this be that Neon bit off more than it could chew in terms of all the movies that it could throw down the pipeline?  

Jackson: That's also what their strategy is. They knew exactly how much they were biting off and they knew exactly how much they were going to chew. And they knew they were not going to chew this movie. 

And I think Ava knew that as well. She's been on podcasts saying, "This is not going to win at the box office, it's not going to be on your TVs, it's not going to have commercials, so just go see it because we have a thing we're trying to do with this movie."

But what distributors do is they get a bunch of movies together, the ones that they want to make in a given year and they go, "Here's our hobby horse, here's our big winner and we're going all in on this one." Look at A24. They obviously HAD success this year. But they had other great movies that just didn't get any awards and weren't released in time to win awards and to get the buzz leading up to the Oscars because they can't do it for every film.

Elamin: Sarah-Tai, when you think of the lack of support that Origin's gotten, what do you make of it?

Sarah-Tai: I think it's interesting that we saw more of Messi the dog from Anatomy of a Fall than we saw Ava DuVernay. I think that's really compelling. 

It's super transparent when a literal dog is getting more press than you. And I also want to push back on Jackson a bit, because I think that Ava actually makes films that are very respectable. If you look at her past work, there are ostensibly films that a non-Black voting pool would potentially be drawn to. These are Oscar bait films. 

And so it's just a situation where you're like, "If Ava DuVernay can't get the votes. Who can?" What kind of interesting, unique, different, biting works are we not going to be able to see? And there are so many bad movies that get so much press. So, regardless of how you feel about Origin, it still deserves a chance alongside all the other films that are amazing.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender