Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have achieved a milestone that has not happened for three decades. Since a weekend in July 1990, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis took the top two spots at the box office with Ghost and The Jungle 2, respectively, no other couple had managed to reign simultaneously in cinemas around the world. Until today. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have proven to be one of the power couples most relevant in current Hollywood sharing the top one and two at the box office last weekend with Deadpool and Wolverinewhich has already grossed over a billion dollars worldwide, and Break the circleadaptation of a best-seller dramatic film that has established itself as a great summer surprise after exceeding all expectations at its premiere. A four-handed triumph that demonstrates the effectiveness of the formula of marketing endorsed by Reynolds and now followed by Lively, which subordinates the narrative or artistic aspect of the film and turns it into a mere expansion of the personal brand of its protagonist.
At 36 years old, the Californian who made a name for herself thanks to the series Gossip Girl He wanted to make sure that his four years of absence from the big screen have not blurred his face in the memory of film buffs. In just two weeks he has starred the cover of the American edition of the magazine Vogue, a press tour with around twenty looks woven around the floral theme —her character runs a flower shop in the film—, among which stands out an archive Versace worn by Britney Spears in 2002, and all kinds of viral interactions, from the creation of a Key lime pie —her mother’s favorite— to the surprising meeting with his spice girl favorite, Emma Bunton.
She has also launched a line of hair care products, Blake Brown Beauty, and even a brand of non-alcoholic cocktails in cherry or lemonade flavors, Betty Buzz. The songs of her close friend Taylor Swift provide the soundtrack to the footage and there are even movie theaters that sell tickets under the name of claim of “girls night.” Despite the controversy surrounding the film’s director and co-star, Justin Baldoni, who almost disappeared from the promotional tour due to an alleged confrontation with her during filming and post-production, the actress managed to get her husband, her mother-in-law Tammy Reynolds and the couple’s great friend, Hugh Jackman, to lend her their media power to promote a film that even competes at the box office with Deadpool and Wolverine. An attempt to emulate the Barberheimer from last year that has worked despite media such as Rolling Stone either Buzzfeedand hundreds of users on social networks, denounce the shamelessness of a strategy that does not seek to promote the film in question, but its main actor.
“It is extremely rare that Blake Lively has turned the tour promoting a drama about domestic violence on a platform to strengthen her status as a fashion icon and the influence of the supercouple she forms with Ryan Reynolds,” writes a Twitter user on social network X in a message with more than nine thousand I like. “So that you know: Break the circle It is not a romantic comedy, it deals with gender violence and has several very harsh scenes. The promotion of this film is making me angry,” point out another, also celebrated with thousands of reactions of support.
There are many angry reactions accusing the film of romanticizing abuse and toxic relationships, as a publicity strategy that has allowed the film to triple its budget in earnings in its first weekend of release, pocketing some 100 million dollars worldwide. The British newspaper The Telegraph points out Lively criticized this adaptation of Coleen Hoover’s novel, which tells the story of a love triangle between a young Boston florist, her abusive boyfriend (Baldoni) and her childhood first love (Brandon Sklenar), for “packaging domestic violence as an elegant romance.” In response to the criticism, Lively shared with her more than 45 million followers on Tuesday Instagram contact information for an organization dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence in the United States.
Although they met while filming what would end up being one of the biggest failures in superhero cinema, Green Lanternthe relationship between the 47-year-old Canadian and the Californian has been fruitful both personally and professionally. Once they both broke up with their respective romantic partners at the time – he was married to Scarlett Johansson and she had been with her partner for three years – Gossip GirlPenn Badgley—began their romance in the fall of 2011. This “fairy tale,” in Reynolds’ words, was forged in just one week, which was the time it took from their first date to looking for a house to live together. They confirmed their love at the altar a year later, in a ranch in South Carolina. They share four children, James, 9 years old, Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and Olin, who was born in February of last year; and a joint fortune of more than 350 million dollars that makes them one of the wealthiest couples in the mecca of cinema.
The protagonist of Buried He has shown a nose for business and his investment portfolio is even more heterogeneous than his filmography: from the gin brand Aviation to the mobile operator Mint Mobile – both companies sold for 2 billion euros in less than four years – and also the Formula 1 team Alpine, a cybersecurity company and a football team in Wales. He also has a documentary series about the day-to-day life of this team, Welcome to Wrexhamand an audiovisual production company.
All companies have been revalued thanks to the media power of a Reynolds, willing to blur the lines between the public persona and the character, between the fictional feature film and the commercial. Whether it is a matter of sneaking Aviation bottles into his films without shame or renouncing any aspirations to artistic prestige, for some time now he has chosen one-note characters in forgettable productions, exploiting his characteristic sarcastic wit to exhaustion. Perpetuating his personal brand and the role of commercial prescriber demands it.
His wife seems to have crossed that line in Break the circle and the specialist press is not happy about it. In the article The Telegraph titled Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are no longer actors, they are influencersjournalist Ben White argues that they should not be the future of Hollywood. “Our best movie stars cannot treat filmmaking as a mere quadrant within a larger business plan. Reynolds must be the anomaly, not the role model.”
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