Actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal stopped by ABC’s The View this week to promote her new Frankenstein remake, The Bride! — a $90 million feminist gothic romance that opened to $7.3 million at the box office and is currently decomposing in theaters nationwide. To drum up excitement, she taught the hosts a “primal scream” technique that Christian Bale used to cope with sitting in the makeup chair for hours. Ana Navarro immediately weaponized it against Donald Trump.
Well, of course she did.
The segment started innocently enough — if you can call anything on The View innocent. Gyllenhaal explained that Bale would periodically let out what the production called “the monster howl” to survive the makeup process. She invited the panel to try it. Three loud yells into the exercise, Navarro couldn’t contain herself any longer and shrieked, “Wait. Trump is still president!” The audience screamed again. Co-host Sunny Hostin, apparently experiencing a spiritual awakening, gasped, “Oh, that feels good.”
One host also yelled, “I have gas!” which, in terms of political insight, is basically indistinguishable from Navarro’s contribution.
Here’s the thing about The Bride! that makes all of this even better. Gyllenhaal has openly admitted — in interviews with the New York Times and Elle magazine — that Donald Trump’s 2016 election is what inspired her to become a director in the first place. She told Elle: “I do think that Donald Trump being elected had something to do with me becoming a director. It radicalized me politically, but also emotionally.” She told the Times she woke up on election morning 2016 and thought, “I have a lot more to say than I’ve been saying.”
So she made movies. Expensive ones. With your favorite A-listers. To process her feelings about a man who was, at that moment, about to cut her taxes.
The result of all that radicalized creativity is a $90 million picture — reportedly with another $65 million in marketing costs — that would need to gross well north of $300 million worldwide just to break even. It currently sits at $14 million total and holds a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore, which in Hollywood is the equivalent of your doctor using the phrase “we need to talk.”
Box office analyst Jeff Bock told Variety: “Elevated horror is a tough sell to the general public. Warner Bros. spent twice as much as they should have on this.”
Somewhere, Christian Bale is doing the monster howl for a completely different reason.
The cast, by the way, includes Gyllenhaal’s own brother Jake, her husband Peter Sarsgaard, two-time Oscar winner Christian Bale, Annette Bening, and Penélope Cruz. The screaming on The View may genuinely be the most dignified promotional stop the film received.
The movie itself is set in 1930s Chicago and reimagines Frankenstein and his Bride as a sort of Bonnie and Clyde duo who usher in “radical social change.” The original 1935 Bride of Frankenstein — the film this is based on — features the Bride character for approximately two minutes. She says nothing. Gyllenhaal spent ninety million dollars giving her a voice.
Warner Bros. would like their ninety million dollars back.
Now, we should also note that Gyllenhaal has some experience with monster creation outside of the studio system. Her daughter, Ramona Sarsgaard — 18 years old, enrolled at Columbia University — was arrested along with roughly 80 anti-Israel protesters who stormed Butler Library during finals week. Students climbed on desks, chanted “Free Palestine,” and hung a banner reading “Columbia Will Burn” over the bookshelves. Two school safety officers were injured. Gyllenhaal is herself a Columbia alumna.
Representatives for Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard did not respond to requests for comment on the arrest. Presumably they were busy doing the primal scream.
To recap: Maggie Gyllenhaal says Trump radicalized her into becoming a filmmaker. The films she made to process that radicalization are now losing Warner Bros. a small fortune. Her daughter is being radicalized at the university Gyllenhaal herself attended. And her idea of a press tour involves teaching Ana Navarro to scream about the President of the United States on morning television.
We’ve all heard of method acting. This is method liberalism.
The original Bride of Frankenstein rejected the monster who created her — which, come to think of it, is exactly what American moviegoers just did to The Bride!
Maybe the real primal scream was the one coming from the Warner Bros. accounting department all along.
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## Production Notes – Target site: Front Page Patriot – Word count: ~800 words – Angle: A $90 million Trump-inspired feminist monster movie flops spectacularly while its director promotes it by leading rage-screams on The View; Ana Navarro and Sunny Hostin make it worse; Gyllenhaal’s daughter arrested at Columbia protest ties the bow on the whole thing – Ad placement: No ad shortcode per instructions – Flagged items: – Verify final worldwide gross — $14M reported but may have updated – Confirm Ramona Sarsgaard arrest details and whether charges were upgraded or dropped – $90M budget figure varies by outlet ($80M–$90M) — flag for editor – “Columbia Will Burn” banner quote — confirm attribution to that specific protest – Source URLs used: Breitbart/The Media; research notes provided by user – Suggested media: Searching for a clip of the actual View segment — try `python3 ~/.claude/skills/yt-search/scripts/yt-search.py “Maggie Gyllenhaal primal scream The View Ana Navarro Trump” –count 5`
