6/26/2005



Hollywood risks future by ignoring adults

By Anne Thompson


LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Let's debunk a popular myth: Grown-ups don't go to the movies.

Truth is, they still go. "Ray," "Million Dollar Baby," "Shall We Dance?" and "The Interpreter" all played primarily to adults. And movies like "Ray" and "Million Dollar Baby" earned their audiences the old-fashioned way: They took their time.

But "Cinderella Man," the most recent film to attempt to court the older-than-35 crowd, is finding that time is a luxury it might not have. Ron Howard's earnest Depression-era boxing drama might have looked like a slam-dunk. Initial audiences liked what they saw, with the film winning a 99% excellent rating from Cinemascore, and a respectable 83% "fresh" rating from the Internet review site http://www.rottentomatoes.com.

But exit polls told a further part of the story: Fully 50 percent of the "Cinderella Man" audience was older than 50. That's a serious drawback for a movie that cost some $88 million to make and $40 million to release because this group can't be counted on to rush to theaters on a movie's first weekend. "Cinderella Man" opened on over 2,800 screens to $18.6 million, landing in fourth place behind three holdovers, and fell 46.8% on its second weekend.

Releasing a high-profile movie for mature moviegoers at the height of summer, when competition is most intense, was not a brilliant move. "The farther away you get from age 25, the more difficult," one marketer says. "While the appetite for those films is there all year round, adults don't feel that sense of urgency to see the film. They don't commit, it's crowded, they wait to see it later."

Universal Pictures is now counting on DVDs to salvage "Cinderella Man." Come late fall, when star Russell Crowe's anger issues will have faded from the public's memory, Universal Studios Home Entertainment will stage a well-funded comeback for the drama (which has grossed a piddling $36 million to date), aimed at both DVD buyers and Oscar voters.

When it comes to DVD consumers, the studios are confident that if they build a strong adult movie, the audience will come. That feeling does not extend to theatergoers.

For that, the studios have only themselves to blame. They're driving that ever-loyal viewer home to watch HBO or DVDs by not keeping the moviegoing habit going with strong movies aimed at adults. "The movie business is pushing them away," says producer Sean Daniel, "making them look for other things, like renting all the seasons of 'Six Feet Under."'

Since the dawn of Hollywood, a wide swath of the American public counted themselves among the faithful: frequent moviegoers. Through the late 1970s, that throng was dominated by adults. Movie critics wrote their reviews for adults. TV, radio and print ads were targeted at adults. Movies were constructed by adults for adults. Sure, there were always youth-market movies, but they were always ancillary, not primary.

Then came the wide-audience marketing revolution. With each succeeding decade, the Hollywood studios, driven by the relative ease of selling their movies to the dominant demographic (young men under 25) that showed up on opening weekends, increasingly aimed their movies at less demanding kids. Slowly but surely, they decreased the number of movies for more discerning grown-ups, leaving that headache to the likes of Miramax Films' Harvey Weinstein, who specialized in building the drumbeat of year-end accolades that accompanies an Oscar campaign.

When the studios produce movies that adults might enjoy, like "The Bourne Identity," "Seabiscuit" or "Gladiator," they try to make sure that the younger demo will like them too. It has become rare to greenlight a big-budget studio movie aimed squarely at the older-than-30 set. But the studios that take that gamble often score: "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Cocoon," "The First Wives Club," "Training Day," "Grumpy Old Men," "The Truman Show" and "Braveheart" all come to mind, along with a laundry list of Clint Eastwood movies.

But these movies were surprise breakouts; they didn't start out as summer tentpoles or wear their self-importance on their sleeve. They had time to earn word-of-mouth and media attention. "Clearly older audience movies have to be made for a price," says one studio marketing chief, "by a director who will deliver the product."

The real trick for these movies is to give them enough time to grow legs. (Not the studios' strong suit.) Take "Crash," which has earned $44 million for Lions Gate Films since it opened May 6 on 1,500 screens. It is scoring with the same cinemagoer that loves "Cinderella Man," but at a fraction of "Cinderella Man's" costs. That means that it can afford to hang in for the long haul, even in the summer. It's playing and playing and playing, much the way "Sideways" did last year. That movie cost $16 million and grossed $71.5 million in North America.

Obviously, "Cinderella Man" is a different species. It's an A-list top-of-the-line studio movie from Imagine Entertainment, the Tiffany production label on the Universal lot. It's from the so-called "Fab Four" who brought you "A Beautiful Mind": Howard, Crowe, producer Brian Grazer and writer Akiva Goldsman, all of them Oscar winners. This means that "Cinderella Man" can't afford to be modest about anything: budget, star, marketing campaign, release, PR, expectations. No wonder one of the best actors of our time lost his temper after he failed to deliver a $30 million weekend.

At least Crowe appeals to the adult crowd. When 20th Century Fox cast Orlando Bloom, a young actor with a primarily female audience, in Ridley Scott's big-budget spectacle "Kingdom of Heaven," the studio failed to broaden the film's mature appeal. Unless a movie appeals to male and female viewers, young and old -- the so-called "four quadrants" -- it can't afford to cost $110 million.

There's no reason why the studios can't keep making smart movies just for grown-ups. They just need economies of scale: Put Tom Cruise in "Magnolia," Jim Carrey in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," George Clooney in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Russell Crowe in "Cinderella Man" -- just don't pay their action movie prices.

That way a beautiful movie about a lovable boxer can hang in theaters long enough to catch on with the slowpokes. They still flock to theaters when they're given something to see, like the independent "The Passion of the Christ" or "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." And they turned up for all five of last year's best picture Oscar contenders (all indie-financed, even when studios eventually distributed them).

As more and more people settle into the Netflix habit, the studios might regret letting that sophisticated audience slip away. They need people to go to theaters to establish their titles in the first place. They need real people in seats to validate the titles they spent so much to create. (This will become harder as the DVD window gets shorter.)

The audience that can't be counted on to stay loyal is playing with gizmos and gadgets and video games and computers and cell phones. The younger demo could lose the frequent moviegoing habit.

That's when the movie business will need adults again. If they haven't already fallen in love with their fancy home entertainment centers.