Based entirely on the fact that it’s been close to a year since millions of people around the world have been living under some sort of Coronavirus restrictions, a well-founded argument could be made that the last thing audiences have any interest in watching are movies and TV shows that use COVID-19 as the basis for the story.
After all, viewers appear to be crying out for escapism more than ever, but Hollywood creatives have been in the exact same boat as the rest of us, so it was inevitable that writers, actors and filmmakers would find themselves inspired by the current predicament. So far, we’ve seen Michael Bay’s thriller Songbird, Netflix anthology series Social Distance and no budget horror spoof Corona Zombies, to name but three.
HBO Max also got into the game with Locked Down, which was released onto the platform last month, and there’s plenty of top tier talent involved. Doug Liman directs from a script by Peaky Blinders‘ Steven Knight, with Anne Hathaway and Chiwitel Ejiofor in the lead roles, while support comes from the likes of Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling, Ben Stiller and Sir Ben Kingsley.
The plot follows a married couple stretched to breaking point during the pandemic, but they put their differences to one side and stage a jewellery heist. Locked Down has been greeted fairly tepidly by critics and holds a weak 44% score on Rotten Tomatoes, although it’s been hanging around the HBO Max Top 10 most-watched list ever since it was first released on January 14th, and currently sits in fourth place.
A lot of that might have to do with the relative dearth of original content on the platform so far, but it’s at least stopping the movie from being instantly forgotten.
