Here's my opinion. Actually, we can start with facts:
I don't wanna see this movie. I'm tired of hearing about this movie. Everything I've learned about this movie has been against my will. It's been 2 years of pre-release fatigue. I'm tired of the PR stunts, I'm tired of the obvious photo ops, I'm tired of the press leaks, I'm tired of the on set leaks, I'm tired of the "anonymous sources", I'm tired of all of it. Any interest I might've had in this movie doesn't exist anymore.
This film went into production in 2020 during a time when every single studio was panicked and desperate to figure out how they were gonna survive the pandemic. With theaters being closed, everything shut down, them losing money to streaming services. And the PR campaign for this film, which started during casting, is a direct reflection of that [studios being panicked].
Again, the budget is small, it's a $20 million dollar budget, it's not a ton of money in movie-money, and they're obviously supplementing that small budget with a never-ending PR campaign to make up for it. (edit: it went over budget to 30-40M! All the more reason for the excessive PR).
On to my opinion:
1 - Harry and Olivia are obviously in a PR relationship.
2 - The movie is not gonna do well. It's gonna tank.
3 - Florence comes off looking great. I don't know her that well, I've seen her in a few movies, she's not my generation, but whenever I see her mentioned, whether she's being slighted or supported in the PR campaign, I think she comes off looking fine. Love that she's also pretty silent in terms of press. This film wrapped a year ago (edit: it was 2 years ago) and she's probably moved on to better things at this point, and will probably just do her minimal press, which is fine. She, despite being the lead actress of this film, does not have as much at stake as the stunt queens, Harry and Olivia do.
4 - General opinion on Olivia Wilde: I'm more the same age. I remember back when she was just a rich girl socialite in NY. I love that she's into acting and into directing. But, I know she directed this film....I dated a director one time, and when his film went into post-production I didn't see that man for months because he was locked in an editing bay and would not come out for air. This chick [Olivia] was on tour with Harry Styles 2 months after production wrapped, I don't know how that worked. (edit: it was 6 months but she still fucked off to England the day after production wrapped, and the film needed extensive edits and was delayed so yeah...she was not "directing" anything really). Also, as a director she is behind the camera role, but her PR team are dead set on over-saturating her in media as the face of this title. Even putting her out more so than the actual actors in the film. Which is weird. There's a word for it, I can't figure it out (edit: I can, it's narcissism. You're welcome.). She's all up in the video, all up in the studio, all up in the radio...it's like...just say this is your vanity project and move on.
5 - Harry Styles: there is no way in god's green earth that a role that Shia Labeouf was cast in could be back-filled by Harry Styles. Harry Styles is youth marketing - that is simply it.
6 - Shia Labeouf is right. I'm sure that when Shia quit this film the studio was desperate and panicked, and went into a tailspin and said 'figure out a way to save it or we're pulling the plug'. And just like Shia has a video of Olivia begging him to stay, I'm sure Harry has a video of Olivia begging him to join this film.
no bc people are saying Harry didn't talk to Olivia to "protect her" from creating more drama... If my boyfriend tried to protect me, whatever, from hate, by ignoring me and giving his fans more reasons to laugh at me I would leave his ass so fast ejbdjdjd straight harry is the worst boyfriend I swear
Yes, plus the fact he never acknowledged her as more than a co-worker!? This is supposed to be a serious two-year-long relationship and your partner barely stands next to you. Fuck the fans, I would feel awful if that was happening to me. As much as the situation is fucked or you’re “private”, you’re supposed to be happy and proud of your partner, of your relationship, you would want to at least show love and affection towards them.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the decision of Harry not having to interact with her during all this mess was the best-case scenario, it was great. But it just essentially portrays everyone involved in such a bad light, the narrative was already bad enough and just made the stunt even more obvious and dumb. I hope this is leading us to the end of it. So much for a 39%, what a waste of everyone’s time.
and then he said "i like girls who eat carrots" and i thought it was so funny and refreshing you know it was so random but it could still be a commentary-
Hello India hope you're well! I remember there was a discussion about how a gag order is set that doesn't allow olivia to talk about harry outside of professional context on social and print media (and that's why she didn't mention him in her Vogue article). Do you think this for some reason changed, since she does talk about their relationship in the new article?
Hi love, I hope you’re well too!
It’s very late where I am, and I’m still kind of reeling from the drama of the week, so I apologize in advance if my thoughts aren’t as well-expressed.
To answer quickly, I don’t think anything has changed per se. Though we aren’t 100% sure that there is a gag order in place, like I’ve said before, pattern-based reasoning shows it’s very likely. And I think that means there are two possibilities, if we look at how these articles are written and the phrasing:
It’s possible Olivia found a loophole. I say this because her phrasing is very specific in both RS and Variety: she speaks of a “relationship” and “deep love” though she still doesn’t label said relationship, or directly refer to him as “boyfriend/partner” (the journalists, who would not be subject to her gag order, do, though). To me, that very much reads as someone toying with semantics. Of course no one is actually going to read that kind of phrasing and think “she’s talking about a platonic friend” but if we think about how contracts are usually written and how specific the wording can get, it’s possible she’s getting away on a technicality.
OR
It’s possible this was an agreed upon stipulation of their contract. As someone pointed out in previous posts, Florence, Harry, and now Olivia are all doing magazine covers for DWD, and these (RS and Variety) could now fall within the realm of official professional movie promo, while her Vogue interview (considering the timing and the fact that it was largely a lifestyle piece on her, not the film) was technically not. It could be that promo under this category allows her certain leniencies in the gag order she did not have before. I say this again because of the consistent specificity of her phrasing over two different publications. Usually this kind of standard almost copy-paste response is an agreed upon communications reactive line: something that has been pre-approved by Harry’s team and she has been permitted to say in reaction to a line of questioning (but nothing more).
The bottom line I think is, during promo season, all bets are off and strategies shift. Think of this as the sprint to the finish line (professionally, but manifesting it also in terms of their stunt) because this is the peak of the ROI on their PR. Everything they’ve been seeding has been leading up to this, and they are going to do whatever they can to keep the drama high and their names in people’s mouths, and that’s likely how it was always planned from the beginning. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this strategy either — Harry famously called Camille his ex-girlfriend, confirming a relationship with his own mouth for the very first time (I think ever) on the Zane Lowe interview for Fine Line, in the lead up to its release.
So yeah, long story short, I think this is very much the plan.