Jennifer’s Body Star Megan Fox Reflects on the Film’s “Overdue” Appreciation

In the late 2000s, Megan Fox was one of the most sought-after actresses of her generation, thanks in large part to Transformers, while writer Diablo Cody had made a major impact with her film Juno, with the two coming together for 2009’s Jennifer’s Body, a horror film which ultimately became a financial disappointment, though Fox recently detailed her pride in the film finally being appreciated by fans more than a decade after its release. The actress also went on to note that she thinks the reason it didn’t make as much of an impact at the time of its release was due to its marketing, with fans now being able to appreciate it for what it is as opposed to what it was being promoted as.

“That, obviously, is overdue. We were all aware of what we were making at the time that we were making it,” Fox shared with Collider when discussing the film’s growing cult following. “We were all taken aback – and we meaning me, Karyn [Kusama], Diablo, and the main players – by how the studio marketed that movie, which was outrageous, and by how it was received. I can’t sit there and watch that movie and not be like, ‘This is a f-cking hilarious, subtle satire. This is a great movie.’ It’s so interesting. Diablo is so brilliant. Some of those shots in that movie, like that shot going across the football field, are insane. It was so good. The DP and the directing was so good. I don’t know. It just wasn’t time. It was a decade ahead of its time, and it took this long for culture to catch up.”

Sadly, the film’s financial disappointments, in conjunction with the amount of attention she was receiving from her various other projects, took a severe mental toll on her at the time.

“It wasn’t just that movie, it was every day of my life, all the time, with every project I worked on and every producer I worked with, it preceded a breaking point for me,” Fox shared with Entertainment Weekly last year about her experiences. “I think I had a genuine psychological breakdown where I wanted just nothing to do. I didn’t want to be seen, I didn’t want to have to take a photo, do a magazine, walk a carpet, I didn’t want to be seen in public at all because the fear, and the belief, and the absolute certainty that I was going to be mocked, or spat at, or someone was going to yell at me, or people would stone me or savage me for just being out… so I went through a very dark moment after that.”

Fox’s latest film, Rogue, is out now in select theaters and Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama is currently developing a new take on Dracula.

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