Argylle might be bombing, but at least its fake author mystery has been solved
No, Taylor Swift did not write the "real" Argylle novel
Aux News Argylle
[Note: This article contains no spoilers for the plot of the movie Argylle; we read a plot synopsis of it online, but honestly aren’t confident we followed it well enough to meaningfully spoil it.]
Although it’s currently staring down the barrel of a far more taxing mystery—i.e., “How do you survive making a $200 million action-comedy and having it only bring in $6.5 million on opening day?”—at least one conundrum surrounding Matthew Vaughn’s new film Argylle has now been solved: The question of its seemingly non-existent author.
You might recall this from a few months back, but question marks began cropping up around Argylle’s authorship pretty early on, after online detectives noticed that the writer Vaughn had supposedly optioned for his new spy comedy, Elly Conway, was a first-time writer with essentially no online history. When the first trailer for the movie revealed that “Elly Conway” was Bryce Dallas Howard’s character in the film, an author dragged into a spy adventure seemingly based on her books, the gag was pretty clear, but it still left a question: Was there going to be an actual Argylle book, and if so… Who the hell was actually writing it?
But while there were bizarre fan theories that the author might have been Taylor Swift—which immediately took on a terrible and deadly weight, such is the gravity exerted by Swift’s fanbase on the pop culture universe—the answer has now been revealed, and it’s pretty prosaic: The “real” Elly Conway is a combination of authors Terry Hayes (I Am Pilgrim) and Tammy Cohen (When She Was Bad). The project actually started as an attempt by Vaughn to adapt Hayes’ best-selling thriller Pilgrim, but when MGM refused to sell him the rights to the book, the pair decided to concoct a brand new spy story of their own, bringing in Cohen to help pen the novel (Which is, apparently, still coming out, and will presumably be running at some pretty House Of Leaves-esque levels of meta.)
All of which might be fairly moot, if Argylle turns out to be the bomb it’s potentially shaping up to be; when your writer and director are having more fun cooking up fake authors than your audience is having watching your movie, you might be in trouble.
30 Comments
The important thing is they gotta a bunch of free marketing with articles speculating that the obviously ghost-written book might’ve been written by [high-SEO-performing celebrity] or [high-SEO-performing controversial author]
Don’t be so quick to call it a bomb; industry analysts are predicting Argylle will bring in $193.5 million on Saturday.
By industry analysts do you mean Taylor Swift?
Idk recession is supposed to hit Friday evening. Something like 3 to 6 inches with terrible driving conditions. Schools and theatres might close prememptively
Interestingly, no one is exactly sure who those analysts are either.
No, see, they said it would make $193.5 million… divided by six. People just copied and pasted before reading the rest of the sentence.
running at some pretty House Of Leaves-esque levels of metaI’m not sure exactly what this means, but I’m glad for the House of Leaves reference. I guess it’s a Five Minute Metaphor.
So is this some kind of Romaning the Stone type thing? cuz it feels like they just redid that recently with Sandra Bullock & Channing Tatum
This is more a Knight and Day remake with the Diaz role being an author with a more complicated backstory revealed throughout… Maybe a small screen will help cover for the visual nightmare the CGI is? There nothing that can make up for the crappy storyline!
no it’s much more annoying.
The Lost Kingdom or something. It was better.
Yeah, Lost City. It was a really fun movie. Obviously, it’s hard to measure up to Romancing the Stone, which is simply a classic.
Stone had two stars at the absolute peak of their sexiness. This just looks silly.
Yeah, Danny DeVito was really cute back then. Oh, you were talking about Douglas & Turner?
We used some free passes to see this last night, and spent about $30 on popcorn and sodas. The only redeeming part of our experience was bringing the extra popcorn home for later this week, I wish we could’ve walked out as I’ll never get that 2.5 hours back…..
How do you survive making a $200 million action-comedy and having it only bring in $6.5 million on opening day?I dunno, but I’m not sure what else they expected when they released it on the first weekend in February.
Modern Hollywood doesn’t really have an “off season” anymore. Profitable movies have hit in January and February in the last couple decades. Although those usually have a franchise and fan base tied to them already or at least a really good catch of a concept. This movie seems to have a cute cat stuck in animal abuse backpack
The trailer had a very “look, we’re doing something cool!!!” vibe to it, but didn’t actually look cool. It also doesn’t help that the two leads are more stars because they were in famous properties, as opposed to being big individual stars with passionate fanbases.
Is it me or does all this coverage about “Who the real author?” about what seems to be a fairly mediocre film just scream manufactured. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this social media “conspiracy” was planted by the studios to try desperately to get some butts in theaters. At least it seems to have failed
the taylor swift of it all certainly just felt like a way to game SEO. also reminded me of logan lucky where there was a similar ‘who actually wrote this?’ conspiracy that didn’t go anywhere.
Logan Lucky remains one of the films that I knew I wanted to watch, yet put off for more than a few years until last summer. I like Soderbergh, but holy crap was that film is just a load of nothing. Just now reading up on it, I knew it was based around Charlotte Motor Speedway, but why debut it in Nashville? I lived in Charlotte for a couple years and there are more than a few great cinemas (even Uptown) that would have been much better than…Nashville. Argylle reminds me of why I don’t miss having cable, a TV for anything other than an HDMI connection, and not having a decent movie theater within 45 miles of where I live. I had no idea this -thing- existed, and don’t care.
But will it have a rabid fanbase of assholes who think that disliking it means you’re stupid, like House of Leaves?
Don’t be silly. You’re only stupid if you don’t also own the companion album to the novel, “The House of Leaves.”
Wait, you don’t own the album?
Geeze, how does your brain even manage to operate your lungs and heart at the same time?
Its probably because I just don’t travel or participate in those particular circles, but I never encountered anyone who was assholish about HoL. Typically, it was just commiserating over having completed it. From what I can grok from the trailers and discussion, this movie is no where near HoL levels of meta. Looks like its just trying to go for “slightly clever above normal” levels of entertainment. Personally, i’ll watch it for Sam Rockwell.
Let me help your SEO.Taylor Swift Taylor Swift Taylor Swift Taylor SwiftTaylor SwiftTaylor Swift Swifty Taylor SwithTaylor Swift Taylor Swift Get Swifty Tailor SwythTaylor SwiftTaylor Swift Tim the toolman Taylor SwiftTaylor Swift Taler Smith Tailer Sweft Tyler SwitheTaylor Swift did something Taylpr Swift Taylor Suift
I got a Swifty Tailor notification for this?
[SPOILERS FOR HOW STUPID THIS MOVIE IS…].Bryce Dallas Howard’s character’s name is Rachel Kylle. “R. Kylle”. There you go. She was the spy all along.
Y’all. Research better. By the time this was posted I’d already finished the book. It was released Jan 9.
I cannot believe this is the guy who wrote the best X-Men movie (and the pretty decent Kick-Ass). Everything since has been utter ass.
I was surprised to see Argylle was considered a bomb given that it had a decent opening weekend for a mid-budget, non-franchise film in February… and then I learned it cost $200 million to make.