NEW YORK − How do you make the moon landing sexy?
It’s the dilemma at the heart of “Fly Me to the Moon” (in theaters Friday), an alt-history rom-com about a slick ad executive named Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), who’s hired by the U.S. government to “sell” the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to a dubious public, which sees space exploration as a waste of resources. But when she arrives in Cape Canaveral, Florida, she quickly butts heads with Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), an earnest launch director who feels that Kelly’s grandstanding undermines the hard work of NASA astronauts and engineers.
It's a brainy concept for a big-screen summer romp, riffing on conspiracies and skepticism about the moon landing.
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“It's the greatest achievement of mankind,” says Johansson, huddled in the corner of a stark Brooklyn soundstage on a recent Sunday evening. “People are fascinated with it still because it just seems absolutely impossible.”
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“There’s been a bunch of movies about going to the moon, so unless you can actually tell a different perspective, there’s no reason to do it,” Tatum adds. “Ours is just a fun way to reexperience” the milestone.
“Fly Me to the Moon” was written by Rose Gilroy and developed by Johansson’s production company, These Pictures. The film is in the vein of screwball comedies “It Happened One Night” and “His Girl Friday,” with quick, witty banter between two polar opposites who are forced to work together.
“It’s such a playful dynamic,” says Johansson, 39, who initially had no intention of acting in the movie. “But once I read the script, I was like, ‘I can’t let somebody else do this part. It’s such a great character.’ ”
The comedy reunites her with Tatum, 44, after 2013’s “Don Jon” and 2016’s “Hail Caesar!,” although they didn’t share scenes in either movie. In North America alone, their films have earned a combined $8.7 billion dollars, according to IMDbPro, bolstered by Johansson’s success in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as Tatum’s “Magic Mike” and “21 Jump Street” series.
But “Moon” faces an uncertain box-office liftoff. Although franchise sequels “Inside Out 2” and “A Quiet Place: Day One” have overperformed this summer, other adult-skewing comedies (“The Fall Guy”) and dramas (“Horizon: An American Saga”) have disappointed. The film carries an estimated budget of $100 million, according to Variety, and is projected to make $10 million its opening weekend, says Shawn Robbins, founder of Box Office Theory, a tracking and consulting company.
“It'll be intriguing to see whether the combined star power of Scarlett and Channing can help overcome the otherwise challenging nature of period-set films when it comes to modern commercial appeal," Robbins says.
Johansson acknowledges that it’s a “very tricky” landscape for mid-budget movies, many of which have gone directly to streaming as people’s viewing habits have shifted post-COVID. She was heartened by the success of Emma Stone’s “Poor Things,” an R-rated Frankenstein riff that netted $117.6 million worldwide on its way to four Oscar wins.
“Sometimes you see things that are interesting and do well, and they buoy your hopes that people will go see stuff that’s subversive or different,” Johansson says. “We're in this transitional time where there's a lot of power in the hands of the audience. If they go and support original ideas, then more of them will get made. It's just the way that it goes, right? The studios are desperate. It’s a tough business, moviemaking.”
Adds Tatum: “When people start complaining they don’t make original stuff anymore, it’s like, OK, well, have you seen ‘Tár’? Have you seen ‘Anatomy of a Fall’? I’m like, maybe go try to see something that isn’t a Marvel movie. I love those movies, but I also see the other things.”
“Fly Me to the Moon” arrives at a fruitful moment for both actors. Tatum stars in thriller “Blink Twice” next month, directed by girlfriend Zoë Kravitz, and he has recently branched out into other disciplines: authoring children’s books, starting a vodka brand and producing Las Vegas strip show “Magic Mike Live.”
“If you told my younger self that I was going to own a strip club now, maybe I would believe that,” jokes Tatum, who worked as a stripper after high school. “But if you told my younger self the way I was going to go about having one, I’d be like, ‘You’re on some very strong drugs, my friend.’”
Johansson is equally prolific, having just wrapped shooting her film directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great” with June Squibb. She has also been on the frontlines of important conversations surrounding fair pay and artificial intelligence, following respective legal battles with Disney and OpenAI. The two-time Oscar nominee, who has been in movies since age 9, says she has learned to trust her experience and her value.
“I grew up in the industry in a time when it wasn’t so obvious that you could stand up for yourself if you were being misrepresented,” Johansson says. “It was very much about pandering to a male audience.”
Inspired by other strong women in Hollywood and her own family, she’s felt more "empowered" to speak out: “My feelings about that have evolved as I’ve gotten older and grown into my womanhood. ... You can be part of that societal change. It’s just a product of personal growth.”