Regardless of whether you find the unquenchable Barbenheimer discourse to be exciting or exhausting, one of the more fascinating parallels to be drawn has done the unimaginable and dragged one of Netflix’s biggest-ever and most quickly-forgotten flops back from the brink of obscurity.
It’s perfectly okay if you don’t remember, but it was only on December 30 of last year that White Noise hit the streaming service, with the absurdist comedy drama carrying a reported price tag of around $100 million. Quite frankly, that’s a ridiculous amount of money for a dramedy, but it’s the people and premise behind it that’s seen it finally become relevant once again.
White Noise only spent two weeks in the global Top 10 before vanishing without a trace, but the fact it was written and directed by Barbie co-scribe Noah Baumbach – as well as featuring director of the $337 million phenomenon and real-life partner Greta Gerwig in a major role – drags it right into the thick of the Barbenheimer conversation on account of the film’s signature set piece being a massive Oppenheimer-esque explosion, not to mention one of its recurring themes being the ever-present fear of total annihilation.
It’s a curious string of coincidences to say the least, but White Noise cratered so hard and so fast among Netflix subscribers that it’s incredibly easy to either have had it slip your mind or been completely unaware from the get-go that the team responsible for Barbie dropped a big budget original focused on the prospective end of all humankind as we know it less than seven months ago, inadvertently channeling the spirit of Baumbach and Gerwig’s next – and greatest – cinematic rival in the process.