Paul Feig wants critics to know that it’s OK for an action comedy to just….be an action comedy.
The director said during Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s on Me” podcast that his latest film “Jackpot!” was “excoriated” by reviewers. The feature starred Awkwafina as an unassuming jackpot lottery winner who must survive until sunset to cash in on her winnings while the whole world is trying to murder her and take her prize. John Cena and Simu Liu co-starred.
“Now I can be happy because we’ve been the number one movie worldwide on Amazon for four weeks in a row now, which is fantastic,” Feig said. “But the critics excoriated us. I mean, took the biggest dump on this movie. All I can figure is like, from the reviews I read, I think they were trying to find a lot of meaning in this premise.”
He continued, “I’m like, guys, the only reason I did this premise is because it’s a Jackie Chan movie. Like, just a launchpad for a very funny person to be completely in danger and not know what’s going on, and then there’s a sweetness and you find out their backstories. But don’t get mad at me because I didn’t do some polemic on the state of America today. I don’t want to do that. I’m a comedy guy. […] I’m very proud of it.”
Also during the podcast episode, Feig spoke about how “huge” imposter syndrome is in Hollywood.
“You never are comfortably successful,” the “Ghostbusters” filmmaker said. “You achieve moments of success. People are always like, ‘Oh, you’re at the point now you can do whatever you want.’ It’s like, no, I can’t. There’s so many things you can’t get sold. It is based on what the last thing you did.”
Feig previously told IndieWire that at first he even thought the premise for “Jackpot!” sounded “really stupid.” However, upon reading Rob Yescombe’s script, Feig thought the film was “the funniest thing I had read.”
“It’s amazing we got to make [‘Jackpot!’] because hard comedies don’t tend to get made anymore, especially not on a bigger budget,” Feig said. “I think the fact that we had this seemingly very dark core to it and dark logline to it, gave it that extra thing that made it a little bit stickier — a sticky concept, as we say in the business.”
And perhaps the reviews have not deterred Feig from his planned franchise for “Jackpot!.”
“I know what the story for the second one would be,” he said of a possible sequel. “We have now created a world, and have these two characters that I love, and I think there’s things to explore there. […] I would like to revisit these characters for a few more. But we also love the idea that this could become an international franchise, too; see what different countries and different cities do with their lotteries if this lottery expands across the globe. I think there are a lot of opportunities.”
In the meantime, Feig will direct Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried in the adaptation of Freida McFadden’s “The Housemaid.”
