PREMIERE MAGAZINE # 360

 

The Roundup with Jeff Stockton (Season 36 Round 10)

 

And just like that, Season 36 is in the books. Here's The Roundup....

THE CHAIN

The Chain is a very solid biopic. Is it revolutionary? No. Does it reinvent the music-biopic formula? Not even a little. But sometimes there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking the “greatest hits” approach when the greatest hits are this good. Fleetwood Mac already comes preloaded with everything a movie needs: relationships imploding, substance abuse, creative rivalries, enormous egos, and some of the best music ever recorded. The film wisely understands that it doesn’t need to manufacture much drama—it just needs to organize what was already there into a compelling two-hour story. Charlotte Wells gives it enough personality to keep it from feeling completely mechanical, while Diane Esposito’s screenplay checks all the expected boxes without making them feel like chores. Sometimes formula works. The Chain is proof.

JOE KEERY
I think we can stop calling Joe Keery an emerging leading man. He’s a leading man. Period. His rise through LRF has been interesting to watch because it never felt forced. He started with supporting parts, gradually earned larger opportunities, proved he could carry Starman, and now he’s standing at the center of a prestige Fleetwood Mac biopic playing Lindsey Buckingham. That’s a pretty substantial climb. More importantly, he feels comfortable there. Keery has enough charisma to carry lighter material, but The Chain also lets him show some rougher edges and dramatic weight. This is the kind of role that changes how an actor gets cast going forward. The training wheels are officially off.

JESSIE BUCKLEY

Jessie Buckley has had one of the more interesting LRF careers because she’s never really been treated like a conventional movie star. For a while, she bounced between supporting roles in larger productions and her recurring Jean Grey appearances in the X-Men franchise. That gave her visibility, but it didn’t necessarily give her many opportunities to truly own a movie. The Midnight Library finally does. And even though I have plenty of problems with the film itself, Buckley isn’t one of them. She takes a potentially exhausting character and gives the material far more emotional credibility than I thought the screenplay deserved. If nothing else, this movie proves she can absolutely carry a leading role outside the comfort of an ensemble or franchise.

THE MIDNIGHT LIBARY

Jessie Buckley is good. There. That’s the compliment. Everything else about The Midnight Library frustrated me. The story felt emotionally manipulative in a way that constantly reminded me I was being told how to feel. The supporting characters were difficult to like, and the movie kept stacking misery on top of misery as though sadness automatically equals profundity.

And can we talk about the genre classification? Fantasy? Really? Yes, technically there’s a fantastical device at the center of the story. But if you walked into this expecting an actual fantasy movie, you probably spent two hours wondering where it went. This was a depressing character drama with a supernatural framing device. Call it what it is.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

There are things I like here. Individual segments work. Some performances work. A couple of the horror concepts are genuinely fun. But taken as an entire movie? This reminded me why horror anthologies are so difficult to pull off theatrically. You’re essentially asking the audience to repeatedly reset its investment. Just as one story starts building momentum, it ends and you’re suddenly meeting another cast, another villain, another set of rules. That can work beautifully on television. In a two-hour movie, it often feels like channel surfing. Midnight Tales struggled with the exact same problem years ago, and Tales from the Crypt never really solves it either.

SEASON PROFITS

No billion-dollar profit season. Not even quite. The studio had some enormous successes this year—Boba Fett, Donkey Kong Country, The Hulk 3, Assassin’s Creed: Eternal—but there simply weren’t enough of them. More importantly, the misses were expensive. Stretch Armstrong was a crater. The Bounty Hunter hurt. Several smaller movies lost enough money that the cumulative damage became impossible to overcome. That’s ultimately the financial story of Season 36. The studio produced hits, but it never developed the depth necessary to turn those hits into a truly dominant season.

So no Scrooge McDuck vault diving this year. Nobody’s swimming through gold coins. Maybe next season.

ON LOCATION (SEASON 36 ROUND 10)

 

The Midnight Library

- Prague, Czech Republic

Tales from the Crypt

- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

The Chain

- Los Angeles, California, USA

- London, England, UK

BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN (SEASON 36 ROUND 10)

 

THE MIDNIGHT LIBARY

Budget: $40,000,000

Total Box Office: $78,105,064

Total Profit: $2,233,323

The Midnight Library managed to scrape its way into the black, but the margin was razor-thin. The fantasy drama avoided becoming another season casualty, though its financial performance was much closer to survival than success.

BOX OFFICE FACT

With the small profit earned by The Midnight Library, Jessie Buckley has now appeared in seven profitable films across nine LRF appearances. Remove the X-Men franchise from that equation, however, and her record drops to an even 50% — Lowell and The Midnight Library turned profits, while Dust Saint and Recursion both lost money.

GENRE RANKINGS

Fantasy: #94

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

Budget: $32,000,000

Total Box Office: $48,910,155

Total Profit: -$11,300,995

The anthology format once again proved difficult to translate into a strong theatrical result. Tales from the Crypt avoided the kind of catastrophic loss seen elsewhere this season, but still ended its run more than $11 million in the red.

BOX OFFICE FACT

Writer Joshua Collins is now an even 2-for-4 with his LRF horror films. Krueger and Tethered turned profits, while DOOM and now Tales from the Crypt both lost money.

GENRE RANKINGS

Horror: #112

THE CHAIN

Budget: $51,000,000

Total Box Office: $195,092,282

Total Profit: $66,667,068

The Chain gave Season 36 a strong closing performer, nearly reaching $200 million worldwide on a relatively controlled budget. The Fleetwood Mac biopic continued LRF's recent success with music-driven prestige films and easily became the financial standout of the final round.

BOX OFFICE FACT

Writer Diane Esposito has been on an impressive music-biopic run over the last five seasons. Songbird, Material Girl, and now The Chain have combined to gross more than $508 million worldwide.

GENRE RANKINGS

Drama: #32

Biography: #12

Music: #7

Season 36 Round 10 Total Box Office:

$322,107,501

Season 36 Round 10 Total Profit:

$57,599,396

Round 10 finished comfortably in the black thanks almost entirely to The Chain. Its $66.7 million profit more than covered the loss from Tales from the Crypt and the near-break-even performance of The Midnight Library, giving Season 36 a respectable—if unspectacular—final round.

Season 36 Total Box Office:

$5,208,954,440

Season 36 Total Profit:

$913,544,660

Season 36 closes with just over $5.2 billion in worldwide box office and $913.5 million in profit. Despite several major hits at the top of the slate, the season never generated enough depth to overcome its long list of bombs and disappointments. Finishing nearly $86.5 million short of $1 billion in profit, Season 36 ultimately lands as a mediocre financial season by LRF standards rather than one of the studio's stronger campaigns.

SEASON 36 BOX OFFICE STANDINGS

1. Boba Fett — $763,673,771 👑

2. Donkey Kong Country — $720,434,668 👑

3. The Hulk 3 — $641,110,407 👑

4. Lobo — $480,893,956 🔥

5. Assassin's Creed: Eternal — $421,105,411 🔥

6. The Song of Roland — $263,839,608 💰

7. Ilvermorny: The Hidden School — $260,440,506 💰

8. Luke Cage: The Purple Man — $249,978,106 💰

9. The Chain — $195,092,282 💰

10. Stretch Armstrong — $144,189,611 ☠️

11. Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2 — $131,525,669 💰

12. Fletch — $123,159,160 💰

13. Echoes of Red — $82,814,137 💰

14. Double Date — $80,369,160 💰

15. The Bounty Hunter — $80,094,428 ☠️

16. The Midnight Library — $78,105,064 ⚖️

17. Gray — $62,441,218 💣

18. Kill Bin Laden — $56,735,938 💣

19. Tales from the Crypt — $48,910,155 💣

20. Darkness — $43,316,174 💰

21. 1995 — $40,003,252 💰

22. Pirouette — $39,100,555 📉

23. An Unholy Union — $37,350,012 ⚖️

24. Three Rounds — $34,386,590 💣

25. The Quiet Between Us — $26,319,562 📉

26. Heartbeat — $25,404,407 💣

27. Fading Star — $23,730,087 💣

28. Voice — $23,437,788 💣

29. Diary of a Wimpy Kid — $18,000,669 💣

30. 1016 West Monroe — $12,992,089 💣

LRF TRIVIA TIDBITS (SEASON 36 ROUND 10)

 

Season 36 closes with a round full of LRF history and difficult creative choices—a familiar franchise star continuing to branch out, the studio taking another swing at a format that burned it before, and a music biopic faced with the enviable problem of having far too many iconic songs to choose from.

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY

The Midnight Library marks Jessie Buckley’s ninth appearance for LRF, though more than half of her studio filmography still belongs to a single character. Buckley has portrayed Jean Grey five times across LRF’s X-Men franchise, meaning The Midnight Library becomes just her fourth LRF film outside the Marvel Universe.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

Tales from the Crypt represents only LRF’s second attempt at bringing the horror anthology format to the big screen, following Midnight Tales back in Season 24. That earlier experiment struggled at the box office and earned mixed reviews, meaning Tales from the Crypt entered theaters attempting to succeed with a format that had already proven difficult for the studio once before. The results were similar.

THE CHAIN

With decades of Fleetwood Mac classics available, narrowing The Chain down to just ten featured songs reportedly became one of the production’s biggest creative challenges. The soundtrack went through multiple revisions during editing, with entire musical sequences being removed or reworked as the filmmakers tried to balance the band’s essential songs with the needs of the story.

Release: The Chain

 

The Chain

Genre: Drama/Biography/Music

Director: Charlotte Wells

Writer: Diane Esposito

Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Joe Keery, Saoirse Ronan, Toby Kebbell, Harry Lloyd, Jonah Hauer-King, Tom Payne, Scott MacArthur, Holliday Grainger, Joe Alwyn, Emile Hirsch

Budget: $51,000,000

Domestic Box Office: $104,001,394

Foreign Box Office: $91,090,888

Total Profit: $66,667,068

Reaction: Writer Diane Esposito's music biopics have continued to be hit films for the studio bringing the stories of Joni Mitchell, Madonna, and now Fleetwood Mac to the big screen.

"The Chain is a music biopic that feels lived-in rather than staged, capturing both the highs and emotional fallout behind Fleetwood Mac’s rise. Charlotte Wells keeps things intimate and restrained, letting tension build naturally, while Sydney Sweeney and Joe Keery deliver standout performances as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. The Rumours sessions are especially compelling, turning iconic songs into raw, personal exchanges. It’s messy, immersive, and deeply human." - Adrian Fell, West Coast Picture Review

"It's safe to say that Joe Keery can confidently add "movie star" to his multi-hyphenate career. After charming us in "Stranger Things" and Starman, Keery bends that likability to its breaking point with a domineering verve that runs through The Chain like a buzzsaw. The film itself ends up feeling a bit unwieldy in its second half and doesn't always juggle the ensemble to the best of its ability, but the highs are high and Fleetwood Mac songs are a blast to listen to in a big theater." - Cal Crowe, Washington Globe

"Despite strong performances and a rich subject, The Chain struggles to shape its sprawling story into something cohesive. Key moments feel more like disconnected vignettes than a unified narrative, and Wells’ understated approach sometimes drains momentum. The supporting cast—particularly Saoirse Ronan and Toby Kebbell—is solid, but several arcs feel rushed or underdeveloped. The music resonates, but the film around it never quite locks into place." - Graham Iles, The Sound & Screen Quarterly

Rated R for drug use, language throughout, and some sexual content.

Fact to Film: The Chain

 

Welcome back for another installment of Fact to Film! This time around we will take a look at the Fleetwood Mac biopic from director Charlotte Wells and writer Diane Esposito.... The Chain!