Will Jonah Hill’s Anti-Gay Slur Slow ’22 Jump Street’?

Will 22 Jump Street take a box office hit after star Jonah Hill cursed out a paparazzo with an anti-gay slur last weekend, then delivered an apology widely criticized online as inadequate? Combine the subsequent marketing absence of Hill, a social-media heavyweight who hasn’t posted anything on Twitter or Facebook since the controversy, with a couple of other suddenly downward social-media trends and Sony may have at least a modest source of concern ahead of the film’s domestic debut Tuesday at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It opens wide next weekend, but is already opening in some overseas markets and doing extremely well. Hill stars in and has a story credit for the action-comedy sequel to 21 Jump Street, which grossed $138.4 million domestically in 2012. To be clear, traditional tracking methods, though less reliable than they once were, still say the film will open very strongly in the United States. The sequel’s overseas debuts are running at about three times the original, though it’s also possible, even likely, that Hill’s controversy has been largely confined to the United States. This may all be a tempest in a not very big (if definitely bubbling hot) social-media pot. Regardless, a major distraction in the domestic market so soon before the film’s debut, over an issue that doesn’t play well with the film’s target audience, has to add a few grey hairs to the heads of Sony brass.
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