People Hate K.J. Apa’s COVID-23 Michael Bay Movie

K.J. Apa stars in a new Michael Bay-produced movie that takes place in 2024 and imagines a world in which COVID-19 has mutated and grown over the course of four years into COVID-23. The movie is titled "Songbird" and the trailer just debuted today.

So. As far as Apa's career trajectory goes, this seems like a home run. You can only be Riverdale's oldest high schooler for so long. And outside of Riverdale Apa has mostly been taking on PTL (Praise The Lord) movies catering to snake-handling church groups and Myrtle Beach timeshare owners. This does not a superstar make. A big-budget movie produced by Michale Bay created the Shia LaBeouf of today, so taking the lead Songbird role was surely a no brainer for Apa!

This movie is so in extremely poor taste & I can’t even believe that this movie is coming out when cases are skyrocketing, hospitalizations are going back up & after so many people lost their lives to this virus. This is so very disgusting, very disrespectful & very insensitive!! pic.twitter.com/mEY12Xkbnd

— Josh ❤️ Ariana Grande #Positions #BlackLivesMatter (@supermangeek101) October 28, 2020

As in, no brains were involved. In any aspect of this. As you can imagine, people are shocked that a movie imagining a worst-case scenario for a pandemic would be released during a pandemic. Songbird more aligns with the phrase "too soon" than the idiom "strike while the iron's hot." This isn't like releasing a sports movie during the Olympics. This is like showing Terms of Endearment to someone recently diagnosed with cancer. It's like, insane, right?

Songbird hasn't actually been reviewed yet, but already it's being derided as insensitive. People are also quick to point out that Michael Bay didn't adjust his unabashedly capitalistic formula for a movie tackling a sensitive subject. The movie is littered with product placement. In fact, in the very first frame of the trailer you can find a billboard for an LG product.

When the pandemic first hit, I - along with many many people - streamed 2011's Contagion and 1995's Outbreak. I see the value in storytelling the reflects our experiences. But something about Songbird just feels wrong. I dare go so far as to say that "This ain't it sis." What do you guys think? Will you be checking out Songbird? Let us know in the comments!