Lee Daniels still loves The Paperboy, even if it almost made him quit directing
"The ones that were kicked to the curb are the ones that I hold dear to my heart," the director said
Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
If you’ve heard of but haven’t seen Lee Daniels’ 2012 thriller The Paperboy, it’s probably for one of two reasons. First and most notably, it’s the one where Nicole Kidman pisses on a jellyfish-stung Zac Efron. Second, it was an almost Earth-shattering flop for the director, who had released Oscar-darling Precious (starring Mo’Nique and Gabourey Sidibe) three years prior. We’re not talking about a so-bad-it’s-good, Madame Web-type flop. At the time, The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin gave the film a dismal D-rating, writing, “It’s as if the filmmakers combined 18 different kinds of scalding-hot peppers, yet inexplicably emerged with oatmeal.”
Rabin wasn’t the only one who immediately cooled on the sweaty, Florida-set thriller, which also starred Matthew McConaughey as a reporter covering a death row inmate played by John Cusack, in addition to everything going on with Efron and Kidman. The film received not a single award upon its premiere at Cannes in 2012, and, according to IndieWire, only made $677,000 on its $12 million-plus budget when it arrived in U.S. theaters later that fall.
