Within the first week, it had racked up 18 million views globally that number has since jumped to 46 million.Īnd since Netflix is so strategic in the information it releases, those seeking to confirm the film’s hit status are forced to look elsewhere - like IMDb rankings, internet search volume and social media. The trio said they had an indication “The Kissing Booth” might become a thing shortly after the trailer debuted. “I’m like, ‘Maybe I should keep some of that to myself.’ I go back and forth on that.” “I guess I feel like it’s almost scary giving people what they want so much, because of how much people are obsessed with our relationship,” King explained, referring to her recent lack of couple-y posts.
At the interview, the two went to pains to not appear lovey-dovey, barely touching as the group played air hockey (King won), basketball (Elordi won) and motorcycle racing (Courtney won). Since “The Kissing Booth” came out, though, the couple has become increasingly more private. He moved into her home in Sherman Oaks for a year, during which they continuously posted a stream of mushy pictures kissing, sharing ice cream cones and wearing matching Halloween costumes. King - whose Instagram following jumped from 600,000 to 4.7 million post-release - has been dating Elordi ever since “The Kissing Booth” wrapped. The three actors are exceptionally close, and their IRL relationships have only fueled the fan interest in “The Kissing Booth.” King, Courtney and Elordi were sitting around a plate of fries after a few rounds of arcade games at Dave & Buster’s.
“I really, really wanted to do it, but I also was afraid, of course, that it would get kind of lost in the crowd of all the Netflix content,” she explained.
She loved the script and the idea of playing a teenager who is comfortable with her body - especially after years of playing cutesy kid types on the big screen. Still, King admits she was somewhat skeptical of signing onto a Netflix movie. “We thought this had a Disney Channel vibe, but felt slightly more grounded - it felt like an interesting, underserved spot between younger YA and edgier teen fare.”
#The kissing booth film series
“We had ‘13 Reasons Why’ and ‘Stranger Things’ on the series side, but it was a space we hadn’t explored much on the film side,” said Ian Bricke, Netflix’s director of independent film. Which is partially why the company decided to produce “The Kissing Booth,” financing the film’s two-month shoot in South Africa last year. Even a “success,” like Will Smith’s “Bright” - which Netflix says attracted a lot of eyeballs, though it never publicly released streaming figures - was dinged by scathing reviews.īut few, if any, of Netflix’s movies outside of its film library have been aimed at young people. Other titles - from “Okja” to “War Machine” to Sundance prize winner “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore” - have flown lower on the cultural radar. While the streaming giant has produced a slew of respected, award-nominated television fare - “Orange Is the New Black,” “House of Cards,” “Making a Murderer” - its film content has yet to make the same kind of broad impact.ĭee Rees’ “Mudbound,” which the company picked up at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, earned Netflix its first Oscar nominations outside of documentary categories just this year. It’s also an intriguing new piece in the ongoing puzzle known as Netflix original movies. Most of the plot points and supporting characters are blatant rip-offs of earlier teen films, which gives the film a similar quality to those pop songs that build their hooks by sampling previous hits.” In other words, “The Kissing Booth” is cute enough, but the majority of critics have declared it an objectively bad movie: It has a 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.īut as Vulture put it, the romantic comedy is “bad in a comforting way. It was directed by Vince Marcello, a Disney Channel filmmaker responsible for “Teen Beach Movie” and its subsequent sequel, “Teen Beach 2.”
It follows an upbeat teenager named Elle (King) whose high school existence is going swimmingly until she falls for her best friend’s hunky older brother (Courtney plays the BFF, Elordi the b.f.). The film is based on a story written by a 15-year-old, and it first appeared on Wattpad, an online self-publishing platform.