Images from The Biggest Loser are routinely jarring (and none more so than the sight of Shay, the 30-year-old woman who began this season at 476 pounds, the show’s largest contestant ever). But fans have certainly received an extra jolt over the last two weeks from Lionsgate, which opted to run trailers for Precious during the weight-loss show. Though all movie spots are edited so they can be viewed by everyone, young Loser fans were probably shocked (and more than a little frightened) to go from Alan and Rebecca racing to fill plastic cylinders with pennies to a movie trailer featuring Mo’Nique screaming “don’t nobody want you” and swinging a frying pan at her morbidly obese daughter. With its R rating and horrific tale of neglect and abuse in the inner city, does Precious really have a place during The Biggest Loser?
Lionsgate wouldn’t respond to requests for comment, but it’s easy to guess what the studio’s marketing experts were going after by buying time in NBC’s third most popular show: those who seek out the aspirational stories on Loser will (with any luck) want to see what happens to Gabourey Sidibe’s Precious as she attempts to claw her way out of her living hell. As Owen Gleiberman says in his EW review, “sometimes a movie has to take you down — and I mean down, really far — to lift you up” (kind of what Jillian does during those brutal, last chance workouts, right?). Though there may have been the occasional Loser viewer who replied “WTF?” after seeing those dark and dreary ads, Lionsgate’s decision obviously paid off: during its opening weekend on only 18 screens, Precious grossed $1.8 million for a per-screen average of $100,000—the largest per-screen average ever for a movie opening in more than 10 theaters. The movie will go wider this weekend.
So what do you think, Loser fans? Does Precious have a place alongside the Biggest Loser weigh-ins? Were you shocked to see the ads?
If people can put up with Shay’s crying and stretch marks then that trailor didn’t faze them.
I’d rather look beautiful Shay working to be HEALTHY than any of the stick skinny fake actresses on tv. Sina I think your comment stinks.
I didn’t see the Ad…I have a DVR….thank god.
A movie places a commercial on a reality television show. Umm, so why is this even a story? “The Biggest Loser” has broadcast other movie commercials — yes, even movies which are serious and have dramatic moments. So the only other reason “Entertainment Weekly” is making this a story is because the protagonist in the movie is overweight and the show is also about overweight people.
So what do you think, EW fans? Does this article have a place alongside other Entertainment Weekly stories? Were you shocked to see this story?
Or better yet, why is EW trying to fabricate a story out of this?
Seriously, Precious is ‘real,’ and I’m so glad whiny crybaby Shay is gone. And yeah, I’m over 300 pounds too, I’m sick of all the crying on that show. Call it “The Cryingest Loser”…
Really? Is it a slow news day?
It’s pretty clear that people who sympathize with obese reality contestants overcoming their obesity will sympathize with the story of an obese girl overcoming her adversity. DUH.
Eww. How about we just don’t have any fatties on T.V.
I will continue to watch the biggest loser though I am not fully behind the concept of eliminating people who desperately need to lose weight. I go to the movies to be entertained so I will not see Precious. I found nothing entertaining in the promos.
Truthfully, I watch every second of each show and I didn’t really notice anything wrong with promoting Precious. I didn’t have a second thought about the show and its advertisers, whatever. Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.
Lionsgate’s decision to put the commercial on The Biggest Loser paid off? That’s weird, I sort of assumed it was because of the huge word-of-mouth and great reviews. I guess correlation DOES prove causation!
I actually thought the same thing! I was surprised….it’s like, you go from, “You ARE worth it, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise”, to “you’re not worth anything!”. I was like, seriously NBC?? This is the exact OPPOSITE of what BL stands for.
Next Nickelodeon is going to start accepting advertising for beer, alcohol, and the most pornographic things allowed on tv. ikes
R-rated??? Inner-city?? During MY white-bread midwestern brain-suck-fest? Horror! what if my KIDS were to see that there are poor fat and even black people out there treating each other in non-respectful ways?? They must be shielded from the hideous reality of life until they leave university and start ironically slumming in a ‘vibrant’ gentrified neighbourhood, talking like a ghetto thug for larfs and feeling like they’ve got street cred and are so diverse and multicultural.
Blecch
What I noticed when I caught the Precious commercial during something I watched in the last day or two was that it was one of those ‘real people’ review ads – where they have people who supposedly just saw the movie raving about how great it was. And every single person they showed was white. Subtle, huh? As in “hey, we know we’ll get the black audience, but we’d better have all white people saying how great it is so we can get them to come too.” As if a white person must see all white people reviewing something to go “oh, guess it’s okay to see that film.” Talk about pandering.
OF COURSE whites have to be pandered to!!! If they see black people suffering they won’t relate to them, they’ll it’s just black people, that’s not about me. Black people aren’t that prejudicial.
It’s just like white woman syndrome!!!
And yes, I think Precious is gonna suffer from white woman syndrome during the Oscars.
“Missing white woman syndrome (MWWS) is a vernacular term for the disproportionately greater degree of coverage in television, radio, and print news reporting of a misfortune, most often a missing person case, involving a young, attractive, middle or upper middle class white woman, compared with cases concerning a missing male, or missing persons of other races or classes.”
Or curtley, racist editors in the media: “Aaaawww, who’s gonna care about a missing black girl?!?! NO-ONE!”
This surely makes perfect sense to me
What a frankly fun article…