Nolte: ‘Springsteen’ Movie Bombs All over the World

Director Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere didn’t only bomb in the U.S.A., it was rejected by seven billion people all over the planet.

Here in America, the Springsteen biopic opened to a truly dreadful $9.1 million. With billions more customers available overseas and Springsteen’s status as a global superstar, you’d think that’s where the money is.

Nope.

The movie only scooped up another $7 million internationally, which means that its overall global take was a measly $16 million.

How bad is that?

Well, box office analysts believed the worst it would do just here in America was $15 million, and it ended up only barely topping the domestic worst-case scenario all over the world.

Is this a case of “Go woke, go broke?”

Well, as I wrote on Sunday, it’s no secret that Springsteen has spent the better part of a decade alienating his core fans by selling them out and smearing them as racist, fascist, and un-American because they support Donald Trump.

But that’s just here at home, right?

The question is did Bruce behave in a boorish, elitist, and obnoxious way overseas that he might have alienated those folks? Here’s the answer to that question:

Springsteen has been around for over 50 years as an artist who not only identified and empathized with working people, but as an artist whose color palette was made up of metaphor, stories, and subtext.

Sure, it was no secret he was a leftist, but we didn’t care how he voted because he always made sure his art was accessible to everyone, was universal—be it the songs or the stories he told on stage.

We loved that guy because we felt he was talking directly to us, that he understood what we were going through, and that he cared.

And then it all changed…

And now, the core of Bruce Springsteen supporters, even those who agree with him politically, do not recognize the obnoxious old guy ranting and raving for ten minutes about the Bad Orange Man.

If you live in the public eye as Springsteen does, you must protect two things: your image and the goodwill of your fans.

Up and down the line, just like David Letterman and Howard Stern, Bruce squandered it, sold it cheap to become a bigshot in the Establishment. He sold us out, he sold out his art, he stabbed us in the back and revealed that he hates us. So now we’re hating him back, and…

It doesn’t take much effort not to go to the movies.

John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.