In late November Sasha Stone and HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko told me they really liked Miss Sloane, largely because it delivered a tough, brassy female-power fantasy that suckered them in — Jessica Chastain as a D.C. lobbyist with menacing dialogue, a superior chess-playing mind, balls of steel and a killer wardrobe. And so I allowed myself to think this might turn into something — women rallying around a James Bondian superbitch — a take-no-prisoners samurai who does end-runs around opponents and leaves welts on men’s asses.
I actually didn’t think Miss Sloane was good enough to be a hit. I knew it was “very plotty, very Aaron Sorkin-esque, very Newsroomy,” as I wrote in my 11.13 review. I knew that it lacked oxygen, that it wasn’t emotionally engaging, that everything Chastain said and did in the film was cutting, slashy, ruthless, icy. And I knew it was “basically a two-hour pilot for a Showtime series about a ruthless but effective superwoman lobbyist who always aces her enemies.”
But maybe, I imagined, this is what the XX-ers might want to see. After all, Sasha and Svetlana liked it, and to me they are windows into the minds and souls of smart, creative, go-getter urbans on the other side of the aisle.
Alas, Miss Sloane has flopped. At the finish of its third weekend and having played in a maximum of 1648 theatres upon opening wide last weekend (12.9), the EuropaCorp release has earned a lousy $2,869,636 domestic and $3.2 million worldwide. Finished. No current. A dead flounder on the beach.