The free TV premiere of a Darren Aronofsky film. With a cast including Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kirsten Wiig and Domhnall Gleeson? You would think that the broadcasting group ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE would put such a top star in a good position on the main channel ProSieben or at least on Saturday 1? Puppy cake!
The very first free TV broadcast of “mother!“ takes place on Sixx – and then in the middle of the night today, December 27 to December 28, 2023, at 12:30 p.m. To watch the visually powerful and controversial work in a human moment, you can stream it with a subscription to Paramount+.
This is also possible via the corresponding channel on Amazon Prime Video.
But why is the free TV premiere of such a film hidden in such a slot? We have a suspicion!
“mother!”: This film leaves question marks
‘Mother!’ is an extremely uncomfortable film. The story of an unnamed couple (Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence) who receive an uninvited visit from an elderly couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) in their completely remote country home has many crazy twists and turns. Most of the TV audience will have a lot of questions about what this all means.
The psychological thriller shocks with bloody scenes, but above all with an incredible number of interpretation approaches. When it was released in 2017, we tried to have a very extensive discussion about it, which you can read after (!) watching the film.
Maybe ProSieben didn’t know What should you do with such a complex film that clearly goes against regular viewing habits? The reason could be: the broadcasting family has so far mainly acquired films as part of so-called output deals. For example, these automatically provide access to all works of a production company in a certain period. By the way, ProSiebenSat.1 has just announced that it will no longer do this in the future. Because they want to show significantly fewer Hollywood films, they only want to focus on selective individual titles in the future.
Until now, TV broadcast licenses were often purchased in packages – and then suddenly you have a work like ‘mother!’ in your portfolio that doesn’t really fit into the typical feature film programming. Have you perhaps been putting off deciding what to do with it? Even the first pay television broadcast did not take place until 2022 on Kabel1 Classics.
Perhaps now was the time to show the film (because part of these package agreements is that the film must be shown at some point so that the license cannot simply be “lost” without being used). So ‘mother!’ is suddenly running in the middle of the night and on a channel that has a market share of just over 1%.
We hope that our article has made you aware of ‘mother!’ and gave the film a chance. It’s no coincidence that we’ve written very little about the work of ‘The Whale’ director Darren Aronofsky. Because for ‘mother!’ it is best if you know as little about it as possible and don’t let it surprise you. Let’s see if you’ll be excited or shocked: both are possible with this movie.