While Andy Muschietti’s IT continued its dominance at the box office over the weekend, Darren Aronofsky’s mother! didn’t quite fare as well. Backed by a marketing campaign that mostly shrouded *everything* about the movie in secrecy, Aronofsky’s latest made just $7.5 million in its opening weekend.

Furthermore, mother! received a dreaded “F” as its CinemaScore, suggesting that most people who actually did pay to see the film just didn’t like it very much.

What does Paramount think about all this? In a commendable statement made to THR over the weekend, the studio stood by Aronofsky and his bold vision.

“This movie is very audacious and brave. You are talking about a director at the top of his game, and an actress at the top her game. They made a movie that was intended to be bold,” said Paramount worldwide president of marketing and distribution, Megan Colligan. “Everyone wants original filmmaking, and everyone celebrates Netflix when they tell a story no one else wants to tell. This is our version. We don’t want all movies to be safe. And it’s okay if some people don’t like it.”

Boom. Whether you loved mother! or you hated it, you have to respect a studio (and a filmmaker) that’s unafraid to be bold and sacrifice mass appeal for the sake of making a film they can be proud of. We never really expected mother! to do well with general audiences or make much at the box office (especially with IT drowning out everything else right now), and it seems like Paramount didn’t either. But they had faith in Aronofsky’s vision nonetheless, and we damn sure respect them for that.

Read our review of mother!, where we called it a “bold and fascinating experience.”