"If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy"
About this Quote
The subtext is about gatekeeping disguised as democracy. Hollywood loves to frame box office as the pure will of the people, but Ebert is pointing to how distribution and marketing rig the experiment. When exhibitors yank screens after a soft opening, the audience never really gets a chance to choose; the choice is pre-edited down to whatever can guarantee an instant spike.
His second sentence lands like an indictment of industrial incentives. Violence and vulgar teen comedy aren’t singled out because Ebert is prudish, but because they’re reliable in a system obsessed with fast, legible signals. These genres travel well in trailers, sell cleanly to advertisers, and require less critical mediation than quieter dramas, adult comedies, or culturally specific stories.
Context matters: Ebert was writing through the era when weekend grosses became a sport, when multiplexes and saturation releases made “wide opening” the default, and when studios learned to engineer opening-weekend events. The wit is in the bleak simplicity: make the market impatient enough, and you don’t just reflect taste - you manufacture it.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ebert, Roger. (2026, January 17). If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-a-movie-isnt-a-hit-right-out-of-the-gate-they-62926/
Chicago Style
Ebert, Roger. "If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-a-movie-isnt-a-hit-right-out-of-the-gate-they-62926/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-a-movie-isnt-a-hit-right-out-of-the-gate-they-62926/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
