Netflix's Family Affair originally had an R-rated title - and that's why Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman originally signed on to do it
It kept the script "at the top of the pile" for both actors
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If you’re trying to get a movie made, it usually helps to get a couple of top-tier stars attached to it - but how do you make your script stand out from the dozens of others that get thrown at the likes of Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron every week? A little playful profanity will apparently go a long way, and that’s what got both of them to notice A Family Affair, the PG-13 film that has shot to the top of the Netflix charts.
At its heart, A Family Affair is a pretty harmless rom-com. A young woman has to deal with the fact that her mother, played by Nicole Kidman, enters into a romantic relationship with her movie star boss, played by Zac Efron. However, Efron and Kidman revealed to People that, when it was pitched to them, it went by a different title.
“It was called Motherf***er,” Efron explained.
“Beeped out,” Kidman clarified. “Somehow that didn’t make it onto the Netflix title.”
There is almost no chance that the producers of A Family Affair expected such an explicit title to show up in the Netflix catalog, so why lead with it? “That made the script stay at the top of the pile,” Efron said. “It’s like, what on Earth could this be about?”
The gamble paid off as A Family Affair is currently the most streamed movie on Netflix, proving that if you can get two of the most beautiful people on the planet on the screen together, people are going to watch it... even if the new title is a bit tamer than the original.
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