Calling all interationally based GITS readers: Your opinion wanted
What’s your reaction to this article:
“Gulliver’s Travels” is a bomb in the U.S., struggling to reach the $40-million mark. But overseas, the 20th Century Fox film is a hit, on its way to grossing $170 million, four times what it’s done in the states. Sony has similarly high hopes for “The Tourist,” which has made a little more than $65 million here. The studio projects that the film will eventually make another $160 million around the world. The same goes for last summer’s “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which was written off as a costly flop after it made only $90 million in the U.S. But the film has gone on to make an amazing $244 million in the international marketplace.
What’s going on here? How is it possible that an American-made product can be rejected by its home-grown consumers, yet embraced by moviegoers elsewhere? Everyone has a theory about what’s going on, but it turns out that most of the films that adult moviegoers and critics in the U.S. view as depressing examples of the decline of American filmmaking — big 3-D action-adventure spectacles and clunky movie-star thrillers — are the very films that do best in the overseas market.
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In fact, it’s because of the booming market overseas that studios have largely abandoned making dramas, since that’s exactly the kind of genre that has the most difficult time competing with locally produced product. It’s why even after two leading actors and an acclaimed filmmaker signed on to make “The Fighter,” Paramount didn’t give the film the green light until it had outside financing — there’s no bonanza for such a uniquely American story overseas.
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Making movies or music that can sell everywhere is good news for media conglomerates that are eager to grow, since overseas markets are expanding much faster around the world than in the U.S., where movie attendance is flat and record sales are in steep decline. But it’s less of a boon for artists who value putting a strong sense of place into their stories. As former Universal Pictures co-chairman David Linde put it: “Movies that are strongly culturally rooted just don’t travel as well, and a reason why few American comedies are big hits overseas. What’s funny in France isn’t necessarily what’s funny in the U.S., and vice versa, because comedy is so often rooted within your own culture and its personality.”
Of course, for the past 100 years, America’s movies have been deeply rooted in our fabled land of cultural opportunity. So the global applause for cultural exports that weren’t even successful in America could well be a troubling sign of the beginning of the end of our cultural hegemony. No one makes more popular movies than the ones made in America, but it can’t be great artistic news when it turns out that the movies that have the biggest global reach are the ones that are the least distinctively American.
What’s your opinion why movies that are faring poorly here in the U.S. perform so well internationally? This is significant issue:
* First it’s probably one major reason why the studios continue to make “big 3-D action-adventure spectacles and clunky movie-star thrillers” — because there’s a track record of them turning a profit based on their performance overseas.
* From a screenwriting standpoint interested in working with in Hollywood, if you’re faced with a choice of how to approach a story, either a spec script or when you go up for an OWA, you have to understand this international B.O. reality as being a part of the studios’ business model.
* This is especially true because the international market now comprises over 65% of an average Hollywood studio film’s theatrical revenues.
What’s your take on this movie business dynamic? Does it affect how you think about the screenplays you write?
UPDATE: THR with this weekend international B.O. report:
Foreign gross total for the Seth Rogan vehicle, a 3D reworking on a popular radio series about a masked vigilante and sidekick Kato, stands at $61 million. Weekend highlights were №1 openings in Taiwan ($1.195 million from 158 sites for a per-screen average of $7,563), Singapore and Malaysia. Worldwide, Hornet has grossed $139.8 million so far.
That’s $61M overseas compared to $78M domestic. And the movie is still rolling out in many other countries. Probably another example where international B.O. far exceeds U.S. performance.