On the same Marc Maron WTF podcast where Jason Bateman blamed the underwhelming reception of season four of Arrested Development, in part, on Netflix, Bateman also spoke about the miserable reception of Horrible Bosses 2 in an honest, refreshing way you don’t often hear often from big-name actors.
“The first one was funny. The first one put up some money. The second one was garbage as far as box office goes,” he told Marc Maron. “Who knows if it was on the merits or when they released it, but it did not do any money,” Bateman said, referring to the $54 million it made domestically, which is less than half of what the original put up.
Maron then asked him, “But when you get an offer like that, you know what the score is, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Bateman said. “That’s a paycheck for everyone. Everyone’s gettin’ paid. It’s a freebie.”
But, really, you can’t blame the actors for taking a paycheck role, can you?
“It’s the audience’s fault,” Bateman joked. “Don’t go out and buy a bunch of tickets for the first one unless you want a second one, cause we don’t have any discipline in this town.”
The only thing worse than the box office returns on that movie, however, were the reviews. It currently sits at a generous 35 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. But, in his defense, Bateman didn’t completely phone it in.
“We can’t just make it suck,” he told Maron. “Everyone’s gonna know it’s a layup, but let’s at least try to make it hold up to some cynical scrutiny.”
The real reason that Bateman thought it failed, however, had less to do with the fact that it was not critically well-received and more with the fact that people didn’t really care about a sequel. “A lot of people saw the first one, but there are plenty of films that made a lot of money where no one is interested in seeing another one.”
But don’t worry about Bateman. He doesn’t think that the box office failure will have much affect on his career. “You’re somewhat insulated in that it’s an ensemble. I have to assume that [people aren’t saying], ‘Oh, come on. Jason Bateman is in it? I’m not seeing that!’ People just weren’t interested in seeing another one. ‘We saw the first one, we had fun, and I don’t need to go see a second one.'”
That sums it up pretty well, actually.
(Via WTF with Marc Maron)
