‘Marigold’ and ‘Moonrise’: Summer 2012 indie B.O. champs

Following up on this post yesterday — “Summer Movie Attendance Likely Lowest in Two Decades” — time to look at what transpired in the indie film world from May-August. And gosh, there were several hit movies. Let’s check out this IndieWire recap that focuses on two of them:

The summer of 2012 has exclusively managed another feat: Two $40 million-plus grossers. Reportedly budgeted at $10 million and $16 million respectively, “Marigold” and “Moonrise” impressively became two of only six summer specialty films to gross more than $40 million in the past decade. The other four are “March of the Penguins,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Midnight in Paris” and “Napoleon Dynamite” — two of which became best picture nominees. Not bad company.

“Marigold” and “Moonrise” are huge success stories that led the specialty box office over the season and made clear a few things. In essence, the former showed the considerable, often-ignored market that is the senior citizen demographic, and the latter showed how strong Wes Anderson’s fan base is.

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There’s another hopeful trend embedded in this summer’s specialty box office performance that doesn’t involve dollar signs. Of the top 20 highest-grossing specialty films of the season, 12 had a woman featured either as one of the main characters (including the season’s top grosser “Marigold Hotel”) or the primary subject (in the case of documentary “The Queen of Versailles”). That’s 60% of the list. Moreover, six of the top 20 films were directed or co-directed by a woman: “Girl in Progress,” “Your Sister’s Sister,” “Ruby Sparks,” “Hysteria,” “The Queen of Versailles” and “Take This Waltz.”

Compare this to the studio top 20, where just one film was co-directed by a woman (“Brave,” though that’s not exactly an example without issue) and only four had a female lead or co-lead character (“Brave,” “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “Prometheus” and “Hope Springs”).

I will grant you, $20M at the box office is miniscule compared to The Avengers which has grossed $1.5B worldwide. But somebody is going to see movies like The Best Marigold Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom. If the major studios continue to gamble on $200M pre-awareness titles like Battleship that lose big, maybe… just maybe we may see a rise in funding for specialty films.

Think of it this way: Comcast NBC, the behemoth media corporation arising from a $30B merger in 2011, owns Universal Pictures, NBC and heavy hitter cable nets like USA, Syfy, and Bravo. But they also own E!, Style, Golf Channel, among others, niche cable nets, and yet valuable assets. Why? Because the revenue they bring in, albeit smaller, is still revenue.

As recently as 6–10 years ago, most of the major studios had specialty divisions, then apparently due to a combination of so-so results and just getting bored with such low-budget fare, some of those divisions were shuttered including Paramount Vantage and Warner Independent Pictures.

But Fox Searchlight [20th Century Fox] and Focus Features [Universal] those outfits are still kicking, still acquiring independent movies, in some cases even developing and producing them. [Sony Pictures Classics only acquires movies].

If independent movies are attracting women and Baby Boomers, while young people may be drifting away from the box office, is it possible the major studios may find their way back to interesting, original, indie movies?

More on this week-long thread about the movie business tomorrow in this time slot.

For more of the IndieWire article, go here.

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