Erin Moriarty Made Her Movie Debut In A Sci-Fi Flop Co-Written By Seth Rogen
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Erin Moriarty has truly made a name for herself in recent years as Starlight on "The Boys." The very bloody superhero TV series started life as a comic book, which itself was originally a Justice League satire set in the DC Universe but eventually became its own thing. The show was enormously popular, and Moriarty was at the center of the action from the very beginning, right up through to the bitter, bloody end.
"The Boys" was developed for TV by Erik Kripke, who served as the showrunner, but none other than Seth Rogen and his producing partner, Evan Goldberg, were recruited to help bring the show to life. This actually marked a reunion of sorts for Rogen and Moriarty, who both worked on the largely forgotten alien invasion movie "The Watch."
Directed by Akiva Schaffer ("Hot Rod"), the movie centers on four pals who form a neighborhood watch group. The guys try to take their mission seriously but spend quite a bit of time messing around. However, everything changes when they discover aliens living among them, and no one believes their story, leaving it to them to save the world from annihilation. The cast was led by Ben Stiller ("Meet the Parents"), Vince Vaughn ("Wedding Crashers"), Jonah Hill ("Superbad"), and Richard Ayoade ("The IT Crowd").
Moriarty played Chelsea, the daughter of Vaughn's character, Bob. Meanwhile, Rogen and Goldberg rewrote what was originally titled "Neighborhood Watch," which had a script by Jared Stern ("Mr. Popper's Penguins") and was set up at 20th Century Fox. It was the first time that Moriarty had a role in a major feature film, having previously starred in a few episodes of "One Life to Life" and a single episode of "Law & Order: SVU." Unfortunately, it went down as a pretty big flop.
The Watch was a comedy that was undone by bad timing
To be clear, Erin Moriarty shoulders no blame for what went down with "The Watch." The problems were bigger than any member of the cast and had more to do with what was going on in the real world, even if we set aside the fact that critics weren't impressed with the end result. (The movie currently holds a lousy 16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.)
Under the original title, Fox had scheduled the movie to release in late July of Summer 2012. Then, everything changed. "Neighborhood Watch" promos were pulled from Florida in wake of Trayvon Martin's killing. The tragedy was highly publicized at the time, and Martin, a teen, was killed by an actual member of a neighborhood watch. Fox ended up delaying the film's premiere to August and changed the title, but that didn't ultimately help very much.
"The Watch" made just $68 million at the global box office against a reported $68 million budget. It didn't help that it was competing with the Olympics at that time. It also didn't help that it went up against movies like the $1 billion box office hit that was "The Dark Knight Rises." The film's lackluster commercial turnout, coupled with its critical lashing and the real-world tragedy it became associated with, sealed its fate.
Moriarty moved on to bigger and better things, including a small role in HBO's "True Detective" Season 1. She subsequently appeared in Marvel's "Jessica Jones" TV series, as well as movies like "The Kings of Summer" and "Captain Fantastic," before eventually landing her breakout role on "The Boys" in 2019.