 Brilliant comedy. This bull gets canceled just after two seasons. Another Latino show left in the dust, gone with the wind. And who was to blame? Some saying of the Latino audience, some saying Hollywood. I say, listen to me now. Only here on The Latino Slant. Hit our website, TheLatinosLant.com. Subscribe to our newsletter for free. And you're going to get all kinds of great updates, emails once a week from me on all our great articles and videos happening here on the channel and on the dot com. So have you guys heard of this television show called This Fool? It's been it's been a TV show now for two seasons on Hulu. But I want to know, have you ever heard about it? Because despite me having spotlighted it the last couple of years, done panels on it, I know that it just did not get a big audience. So I was happy to hear that it got a second season this past year in 2023, which I did a episode by episode review of. I absolutely loved it. It's one of my favorite Latino comedies. It's one of my favorite comedies. So what I want to do in this video is I want to talk about its cancellation in particular. Then I want to go to a little back and forth between Allie Times and different writers and different opinions on who really is to blame. And I am going to give you examples of movies that in fact did not succeed and some that did despite of itself. So I'm going to break it down and I'm going to tell you exactly at the end of this video, who is to blame for not only this fool, but other TV shows and movies that happen to be Latino for their early exit of this fool, which I absolutely love it. This was one of the shows that got it right when I say it in meaning the portrayal of Allie life in it's a kind of multifaceted, just kind of a different angle that isn't over romanticized or there's no trauma stance, maybe other than hating yourself in a comedic satirical way, which was this fool. So I was not surprised when it got canceled because I never saw a huge upswell as far as a wider audience, you know, taking to this new comedy, you know, sort of like The Bear or Abbott Elementary, which to me, this fool should have been up there with Emmy nominations and in the claim. David Garile from Allie Times posted this, right posted this. This fool got Los Angeles, Latinos, right? Who's to blame for its cancellation? Hey fools, next time the Latino show premieres, tune in when it gets canceled because not enough of you did don't blame Hollywood, blame ourselves. And this is the article by Gustavo Ariano, which we will have linked here who's to blame for the cancellation, which I really liked the article and said it was fantastic to him. Someone in the community chimed in. This isn't Latino's fault, bro. That's the same Eva Longoria mindset I don't agree with. We can't blame Latino audiences if something hits or flops shows won't stick around if they don't find out ways to cross over into mainstream middle America to appeal to a broader audience. And then the writer Gustavo Ariano chimed in if he can't win at home, though, how do you expect, how do you expect to win anywhere else? He chimed back. Perhaps I'm jaded and still figuring out how to wrap my own head around this, but I'm honestly not sure anymore if it's possible to win at home at a mass scale with television content designed around a subculture that doesn't resonate with mass audience. Gustavo, I addressed that in my column. Did you read it? You read it, right? And Barry goes back, mad love for you big dog, but I disagree with your conclusion in the article. Also Insecure, the comedy show. Insecure wasn't wildly popular because it was localized to LA. It was wildly popular because the writing was stellar and the cast was perfect. They caught the zeitgeist at the perfect moment. He goes on to say, Latinos will support something out the gate, but if they don't stick around or continue to grow in numbers, then the fault isn't them. It's the show itself. If Insecure wasn't great, it wouldn't have gotten the axe. It would have gotten the axe. I'm not saying that this fool wasn't good. It was. It just wasn't great. Eva Longura used this Latino guilt trip strategy for flaming hot Cheetos. And honestly, it was weird. Now I'm going to pause right there. Marketing it to a bigger audience is not the job of the Latino audience. Even if you get every Latino to watch this show or watch other canceled shows from Vita to Hentify, to Promiseland, to Gordita Chronicles, to one day at a time, all those shows did not survive more than two or three seasons, which in this day and time of streaming, to get a second season is a pretty big deal. But those shows, what do they have in common? They did not get that mainstream audience. Ultimately, it is the studio's fault. It is Hollywood's fault. It is who's ever in charge of their particular marketing. I want to know what they did in the marketing, because if you're just marketing to Latinos, you're going to lose. You're just going to lose. And it is a tightrope dance. So that's one thing. Now, he goes on to talk about, he starts mentioning other examples. And here, flaming hot, that Eva guilt-tripped the Latino audiences to like, are you coming? Why aren't you coming? I want to get back to that. Latino is already one of the highest watchers of movies. We show up. We just want great stuff to show up. Not average product that we're being guilt-tripped into watching, in my opinion. The bigger problem are studios who don't develop marketing budgets large enough to support wide adoption on films that can cross over. Then I finally chime in. The ongoing problem here is studios having a clue how to promote these films. Trust me, I've been covering them in TV shows as well from this fool to go to the Chronicles, Beatles, and now Problemista, which is set to release the same day as Dune. Then he says, how should they promote them? I'm glad you asked. Now, let's get to this part of the video as far as how they should promote them. I'm going to use four examples and one you pointed out, but let's go with In the Heights 2021. This was a huge flop commercially at the box office because they tried to sell this as the musical Latinos want, and they completely missed the mark that this isn't a, per se, a Latino story. It is an American Dream immigrant story, sure, but it is a musical from Broadway first. So how would I have been marking this one? Well, I would have made sure that every high school to college theater group had tickets to this film, had swag goodies marketed to them, marketed to their musicals, because all of those colleges, high school productions love Lin-Manuel Miranda's productions, Hamilton in the Heights, et cetera, et cetera. That's what you got to hit. This is not a Latino film. You've got to treat it as a new type of musical that young audiences love, and they will love these songs, and it never clicked. It doesn't matter who was in the film, what matters was the songs, and that was never promoted. We should have seen comedy groups, excuse me, drama clubs, high school clubs, theater, thespian clubs, and even colleges going in droves to see this film. How was it marketed? I think it was a really meager attempt at certain Latino groups to buy tickets for their for their database, and it failed, as that happens all the time, because Latinos have a very eclectic palette when it comes to entertainment, but not everyone likes a musical first of all, not every Latino likes a musical, not every Latino is from the East Coast. So that is ultimately why it failed, but I gave you right there an example of how you could have marketed. You should have marketed to its base, which is the musical theater base. Okay, there you go. Flaming hot. Now, you had a problem with flaming hot. You didn't like it. That doesn't matter, right? It still was a film that was made, I believe, for under 20 million. Fox Disney owned it, ultimately never got a theatrical release, only streaming, and it did pretty well on streaming. What Eva Longoria and the team did there is they did their own street promotions. They did their own marketing, social media, press tours. For that audience, I think that was a really smart idea, because they probably saw the writing on the wall is that they got no marketing budget. Now, if I was that person at Fox, at Disney, at Hulu, I would have selected a limited release in all the major Southwest cities. I would have pumped up Ricardo Montañez's story as a janitor cholo ex-gang member coming up and being born again, being this and that. You hit those victory outreaches. You hit those communities that are reflective and shown in this movie. And we're talking at least a dozen, a dozen Southwest towns from Chicago to Texas to California that this movie could have grown and could have tripled its popularity even before I hit the streaming. But again, I don't think I think that they were scared of this product. They just did not understand it. Blue Beetle. Blue Beetle is interesting because Blue Beetle, in its opening weekend, the track scores show that the Latino audience doubled in their audience going 20% of the country, 40% of the audience opening weekend were Latino, which is fantastic. Here's an example where a lot of Latinos went that opening weekend. But here's why it flopped. No one else went. No one else went. Why? Because Warner Brothers did not mark it out of the community. Latino neighborhoods from Houston to Montabello events just for rasa. And guess what? That's fine and dandy, but that does not translate at all to the bigger mainstream audience. So here's what I would have done months prior. You do a campaign similar to what I was telling you about within the Heights, but you do it to all the dojos across the country. Every dojo across the country should have had Sholomari Dwayne's face and then him in his Blue Beetle outfit, stand-ups with coupons, with limited tickets to give out to students, because every dojo, especially karate dojos, young ones, young kids, love Cobra Kai. There was no Cobra Kai time. You don't even have to say Cobra Kai. You don't even have to have that. And if you don't own the Cobra Kai name or the logo, you just say Sholomari Dwayne, your martial arts star. And you go to Martial Arts TV Star. Man, you're attracting blacks, whites, Asians, because at the end of the day, that's who you got to track. And that's why Blue Beetle flopped. It was a disaster, let's just be honest. And I loved the Blue Beetle. It's only now that people are coming to me emailing me, letting me know, oh my God, I finally saw Blue Beetle on Max. I loved it. I loved it. So that was another example. Three failures. Let's talk about one success. And I want to connect this with the brand, because unlike those other ones that I mentioned, this one has obviously the biggest brand, Spider-Man. And it was a monster hit. They did multi-platforms of music, fashion, animation as far as global marketing. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And even they did not expect the commercial success that it was. Now, I will tell you, this one was just a superior story in animation in just presentation. So you had a lot of people who weren't Latino hooked, absolutely hooked. And I feel that whoever did that, the marketing behind this was very wise not to just make this a Latino thing. You can't. That's ridiculous. It just happens to be it's part of the story. It's interwoven. So Hollywood, if you don't know your brand of these new Latino stories, you've got to hire someone outside of Hollywood to help you. Because ultimately, it's your fault. If you think that all Latinos that are going to go and make this a hit, and it's not, it's your fault. You also got to recognize the palette, the diversity of what Latinos love. And I'm going to give you a recent example. Bob Marley, one love, which just crossed over 100 million, biopic on the great reggae star. Opening weekend was a smash. Okay. Caucasians went 43%. Blacks went in a high clip. Latinos, a higher clip than their population. When you have that combination of three, you are winning big. And why? There were no Latinos in Bob Marley. There was none of that. There was like absolutely none. But it didn't matter. Why? Because the brand was there. You have Bob Marley, you have his music, which is already a global treat. So what the marketing people did is that they leaned into the reggae colors of Jamaica, the music in their marketing, and a great leading man in Kingsley, Ben Adir, and you had gold. It's making money right now. I think I gave you guys a good argument as to how I would have promoted the last three examples. And then you had the winner with four. But ultimately, that answer is that marketing team has got to know their product. And if they can't comprehend how to market some elusive Latino story, they got to hire outside of their company. They got to bring in some experts. So finally, let's use your problemista. I heard it was delayed because it was supposed to be released during COVID. And then they pushed it back all the way to now. Problem is, is that most Latinos are going to go see Dune because they love, you know, the big budgets of sci-fies and Dias Chalamet. You got an incredible cast, that whole thing. Okay, how would I have market to this one? A Julio Torres fan did not know about this film. So that's already a bad thing. If I was this, this marketing company, I believe it's Lion Gates, Lionsgate, I would have gone together with Julio's fans because Julio does not like to even, he's stated time and time again, I don't like to push any card. I don't want to bring out the card, the immigrant card, the gay Latino card. It's not who I am. I just leave, let the work speak for itself. Fair enough, get Julio's database. Who are his fans? Who is his fan club? Connect with them because this is a narrow niche art art house type of comedy. So that's where you got to go first. You go with this fan base, then you go with the fan base of maybe what are other films like this? Barry said it's a Michelle Gondry type of film, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Okay, you got to get creative in connecting to those fans, not Latino fans. Latinos en masse are not going to go see this film. Maybe they'll discover it later on on streaming, but you got to go after Julio Torres fans, Losa's spooky fans, Michelle Gondry fans treat this as an art house delight and packing those art houses. That's where I would have gone. The fact that a Julio Torres fan did not know that this film existed tells me that Lionsgate, whoever's responsible for this, failed, failed miserably. And ultimately, thank you guys for watching this whole video. It's a constant consistent failure of Hollywood execs, Hollywood marketing team, specialists, I don't know what, listening to the wrong ears on these fine Latino products from this fold of problemista to to Blue Beetle and other films that I imagined in the heights, absolutely loved in the heights. But you got to get creative. You got to think outside the box. And if all else fails, come to Polly, come to Latino slant, we'll set you straight. I will tell you how to market each film, and it'll be a bigger success than you could ever imagine. All right, folks, what do you guys think a lot to a digest? But that is the current state of things here with this full. Again, highly recommend you go watch this full on Hulu. Fantastic comedy. I loved it so much. Think of think of a kind of a lot. Just think of a new iteration of Friday. You know, oh, my God, so hilarious, so ridiculous, wherever you guys are at. Keepers