“Holiday Box Office: The Battle for the Over-35s”
Take a good, long look at the headline posted above: “Holiday Box Office: The Battle for the Over-35s.” When I started this blog back in 2008, conventional wisdom was that adult dramas were dead. Adult audiences? Studios persistently gave them the cold shoulder in Hollywood’s obsessive pursuit of the youth audience. Now 5 years later, we have this:
Christmas isn’t for kids anymore, at least not at the cinema. More than ever before, the year-end movie calendar is crammed with titles that will live or die by their ability to lure older audiences.
The aging population is one reason for the shift, but another factor is the expansion of the Academy Awards’ best picture category in 2009 to include as many as 10 films. Studios are seizing an opportunity to ride awards buzz to box office, as Warner Bros. did a year ago with the adult drama Argo. “It woke up the sleeping giant,” says Phil Contrino, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com.
For much of the past decade, independent distributors have dominated the awards game. In many cases, these specialty films have played in limited runs during the holidays to stay out of the way of big studio titles, waiting until January and beyond to expand substantially. But now the studios are being far more aggressive: More than a dozen adult-skewing titles will compete for screens and eyeballs in December, including Alexander Payne’s Nebraska (Paramount), David O. Russell’s American Hustle (Sony), John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks (Disney), Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount) and Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Fox). Add to the mix the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (CBS Films) and a packed slate from The Weinstein Co. — Philomena, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and August: Osage County — and the Christmas buffet table is overflowing (Llewyn Davis will keep a relatively small footprint until later in January). Spike Jonze’s Her (Warner Bros.) and Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor (Universal) also open in late December but will play in only a few theaters until after the new year. (Jason Reitman’s Labor Day now will do only a Dec. 27 qualifying run then open wide Jan. 31.) There’s also Relativity’s Out of the Furnace, which hits theaters Dec. 6.
“It’s going to be incredibly crowded,” says Contrino. “Many of these films are competing for that valued upscale-adult crowd who reads tons of reviews and pays attention to the Oscar race.”
That valued upscale-adult crowd.
Seriously. Dude is quoted in the trades saying that. Again 5 years ago, there was no such thing as a “valued upscale-adult crowd.” There wasn’t even an acknowledged ‘adult crowd.’ Now? Much different story.
Three things:
* The Hollywood entertainment business runs in cycles. This has been true since the very beginning of cinema, then television. What is hot now, won’t be hot tomorrow. Then it will come back. And fade again. Adult audience was dead. Now they’re “valued.” The cyclical nature of the business is something anyone who works in it has to accept and understand.
* Right now, everyone seems to be hot on television. But because of the cyclical nature of the business, you can be assured that in five-ten years time, TV will have faded and movies will be preeminent again. One indicator: Young people don’t even watch what is known as “TV” on TVs. So if they’re consuming these shows on their computers, does this programming even qualify as TV anymore?
* As a writer, if you have been reluctant to write stories aimed at adult audiences, think again. Major studios and financiers know that the 35+ crowd, especially Baby Boomers and Seniors, feel a special connection to movies. If there’s a good movie out with solid buzz, we’ll go see it. So if you have a great story concept with adults as your target demo, don’t shy away from it, rather embrace it. Write the hell out of it. There are buyers who see opportunity with the “valued upscale-adult crowd.”
For the rest of the Hollywood Reporter article, go here.
A quick word to my fellow Old Farts: If you want to see more and better movies aimed at us, put your greenbacks to work in December and January by going to as many of the upcoming onslaught of adult-oriented films. We have no excuse. There are numerous quality movies being released over the next several weeks. Let Hollywood know these are this is the type of storytelling we want to see.
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