The Twitter account for Ava DuVernay’s Origin has gone rogue against Neon
Irritated by the lack of promotion, whoever runs the Twitter account for Ava Duvernay’s Origin is accusing Neon of botching the film’s release
Photo: Dia Dipasupil
The Twitter account for Ava DuVernay’s latest film, Origin, is getting spicy on main. Calling out the movie’s distributor Neon of, among other things, not inviting DuVernay to the company’s Oscar party, the film’s social media feed is filled with messages for Neon, accusing it via retweets of bungling Origin’s release. The account’s 750 some-odd followers were treated to tweets and retweets lambasting the distributor for allegedly putting all its advertising dollars toward the Oscar-winning Anatomy Of A Fall, leaving the likes of Origins and Ferrari to wither on the vine.
Yesterday, the account retweeted a photo from the Neon Oscar party, wondering why Duvernay wasn’t invited. “Is it odd that the filmmakers of Neon’s current film in theaters weren’t invited to this Neon celebration? Nope. Standard operating procedure for [Neon founder Tom] Quinn and team. That’s how Neon rolls. More on this later.”
We don’t know if there was a mandate to invite every Neon-related director to the party, but DuVernay was at the Oscars, so it was rude not to ask.
Origin marked another commercial disappointment for DuVernay. Her previous work, Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time, crawled across the $100 million mark on a reported $100 million budget. Origin was considerably less expensive but grossed less than $5 million on a $38 million budget.
In addition to explicitly calling Neon out, the account has become a repository for negative reposts of the company’s handling of Origin’s Oscar campaign. One tweet from actor Wendell Pierce calls Origin “one of the best films of our time” that will “receive no accolades but will be remembered long after most of the Oscar-awarded films reach obscurity.”
@ORIGINTheMovie also retweeted news articles reporting on several distribution-related lawsuits against Neon, including those filed by the producers of Clemency and the Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace, both of which, like Origin, center on Black women. The account also directly shared a screenshot from the website Showbiz 411, criticizing the distributor for its handling of Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, an Oscar-nominee released in mid-February, saying that Origin and Michael Mann’s Ferrari were “snuffed out” because Neon put “all their eggs in the Anatomy Of A Fall basket.” Of course, Anatomy Of A Fall had already been nominated for two Oscars, including Best Picture, and would go on to win Best Original Screenplay.
Earlier this year, DuVernay expressed frustration with Neon’s handling of the film—though not nearly as pointedly as the more recent posts. “It’s been disappointing it has not had the reach in the Hollywood community in terms of the industry that considers awards, and that’s a mechanism of our distributors’ limited budget and strategy in the way that it’s been rolled out,” DuVernay told AP in January. Though even there, she seems optimisitic of the film’s future, saying that “when people do see it, the response has been overwhelmingly positive […] Time will tell and time will reward the film for its merits.”
This is a sharp turn from where the film began. In November, Deadline reported that Origin was DuVernay and Neon’s highest-tested movie. On February 28, Neon re-released Origin in 500 theaters across the U.S. for a one-night-only special screening.
DuVernay financed the film through nontraditional means, finding backing from philanthropists, including the Ford Foundation, Melinda Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, and 23andMe CEO Anny Wojcicki. At the time, this was hailed as a way to free her from the restraints of budgets, allowing metrics other than box office to determine its impact—at least according to Jobs. However, without the push from Neon, the film was unable to break through the awards season noise.
Even more nontraditional was its marketing. After seemingly giving up on Neon promoting the movie as they saw fit, in January, Origin star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor began handing out fliers for the film outside a Los Angeles AMC. DuVernay later shared the video on Instagram, writing that her “heart aches” for her star. She wrote:
“Someone posted this footage, and I burst into tears. This was apparently taken last Sunday, Golden Globes day. This is a video of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. Our lead actress in Origin. She wasn’t nominated that day. She was handing out postcards for our film at a local AMC in LA to passersby. She had told me that she wanted to remind herself about what matters. That she wanted to invite people to see our work, and that she would stay low profile, keep on her mask. That it wasn’t about her, but about the movie. Someone noticed her. And recorded her. And now I see this – and my heart aches.”