It’s a crying shame that one of Netflix’s best-ever Hollywood genre films ended up falling through the cracks, but that’s one of the unfortunate side effects of the streaming service opting to release They Cloned Tyrone on the exact same day as Barbie and Oppenheimer blasted into theaters.
Co-writer and director Juel Taylor’s biting social satire wrapped in the clothing of an ambitious sci-fi comedy boasts a Certified Fresh approval rating of 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and yet if resolutely failed to make much of an impact on the platform’s viewership rankings.
As a first-time feature filmmaker, Taylor revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that as much help as necessary was sought from more established names, but only one three-time Academy Award-winning modern maestro answered the call and showed up in person to lend an assist.
“I call Guillermo [del Toro] “Uncle G” now. I adopted him as my surrogate uncle. But he came by and he’s so cool. He’s got to be one of the nicest people, man. They asked me, “Hey, you want to reach out to people?” And so I gave them a whole list of writers and directors to ask if they would watch the movie and give feedback, if they were so inclined. And Guillermo was the only one who responded. And not only did he respond, but he gave me his number to call him.
And then he was like, “I’m coming to the lab.” And I was like, “What!?” So he came to the lab, and he spent the whole day with us, literally eight-to-10 hours. It’s really one of the craziest memories, and just for the sake of the story, we all ordered Popeyes fried chicken for lunch at the editing lab. He was like, “I can’t not order fried chicken,” so we all ordered Popeyes just because it would be something stupid to tell people someday in the future. So he was so generous with his time, and he’s a genius, obviously.”
They Cloned Tyrone is very much the product of Taylor’s vision, but having somebody with the vast knowledge and experience of del Toro on deck would have been a massive benefit, even if nowhere near as many people ended up watching the fruits of his labor as it deserved.