Do Film Critics Get Paid By Studios For Positive Reviews? Let's Answer Some Electronic Mail
Another week is over and it's again time to answer reader mail at The Hard Pass. And thank you once again for being a subscriber. This newsletter only exists because of you. (Okay and, I guess, to a lesser extent, me.) This is a big one and this one question takes up the entire post because I had a lot to say about this topic. And, in the future, it gives me a place to point when this topic is, once again, raised. And I do hope this will answer any and every question you've ever had about the topic of "studios paying critics for reviews."
Why do social media reviews of movies always sound so enthusiastic and bombastic? I've heard rumors studios pay people for positive reviews? Is this true? – Dan
Well, first, these are two separate questions with two separate answers. But I will do my best to answer both of them. The whole "critics being paid by studios" concept gets brought up every few months. I'd say pretty much every person who writes about movies or television for a living has been accused of this by someone on social media who is motivated to have an opposing opinion. More times than not it involves superheroes – particularly those originated by DC Comics. Anyway, I'm not looking to open up a whole can of worms, but I do want to get into why there are people who think this. And the answer is a little more complicated than just "no." And there have been some, let's say, "shady operations" out there that I'll get into. And I'll get into the closest a major studio has come to trying to coerce an opinion out of me.
(Since movie studios do not pay me for my opinions, The Hard Pass only exists because of paying subscribers and I do need to have posts just for them. If you decide to become a paying subscriber today, there is plenty left to this post — it‘s over 2000 words — plus a lot more like the time a famous actor told me a story about Tom Cruise that is now my favorite Tom Cruise story, the time I accidentally tricked an actor into spoiling the ending of Lost, and the time Larry King called me a "freak" and asked if I was "a nerd.")
