‘The Fabelmans’ Flops on ‘Jeopardy’ After All 3 Contestants Fail to Name Spielberg’s Film

Jeopardy contestants only cemented The Fabelmans‘ poor box office stats on last night’s show when all three competitors failed to guess the Steven Spielberg drama. During a clue in the category Summing Up the Spielberg Movie, Vince Bacani, Katie Palumbo and Stephanie Pakula all failed to name the Golden Globe winner.

Host Ken Jennings read aloud, “Young cinema lover Sammy represents cinema lover Steven Spielberg,” but the clue didn’t stick with Katie, who guessed, “What is Hugo?” naming the 2011 Martin Scorsese fantasy movie.

Next up was Vince, who also didn’t fare well by guessing, “What is 8MM?,” a response Twitter had a field day with. The Fabelmans is pretty far removed from the Joel Schumacher snuff film crime thriller, but some viewers suspected poor Vince meant to guess J.J. Abrams’ Super 8.

With Vince and Katie striking out, it was Stephanie’s turn, but she didn’t even try, just shaking her head instead. Thankfully, Jennings was there to inform them that The Fabelmans had been the correct guess. While the moment stunned plenty of viewers back home who were baffled Jeopardy contestants hadn’t heard of the film, some suspected the episode was taped much earlier than it aired, explaining the particularly difficult clue.

Still, that didn’t stop Twitter from doing its thing and posting screenshots and clips of The Fabelmans fail, where film buffs and game show fans swapped takes.

A fan wrote, “tonight’s jeopardy was a major blow for the fabelmans smh.”

Another came to the defense of contestants, tweeting, “I don’t feel like many Jeopardy contestants are huge film lovers and if you’re not a huge film lover, you’ve probably never even heard of The Fabelmans much less know the main character’s name.”

But one viewer was less forgiving of Jeopardy contestants missing the clue, writing, “someone in these comments keeps arguing that ‘normal people’ wouldn’t know about the fabelmans, but i just gotta say, these aren’t normal people. they’re jeopardy contestants. they should fuckin know!”

Watch the moment from last night’s episode in the video above.